Authors: Grant McKenzie
CHAPTER
51
The beasts had fallen behind. Big Brother heard their distant howls upon discovery of their bloodied companion in the abandoned burrow. The howls were joined by gunfire as the sheep released their frustration in short bursts of lead. He never heard them yell a warning to the imaginary monster they believed hid inside.
Big Brother climbed out of the woods and into the tall, wild grasses of the coastal bluff. Just beyond, erect and stiff like a prison, its foundation anchored into a granite ledge that defied the force of the ocean below, was the Clallum County Hospital.
Its white walls were wind-beaten and salt-sprayed, but its inner wards were renowned for their care of the terminally ill. Big Brother couldn’t see it from where he stood, but he knew that on its eastern face a glassed-in balcony jutted out over the cliff to offer an awe-inspiring view of the Strait of Juan De Fuca and, on a clear day, the lazy green of escape: Vancouver Island, Canada.
It struck him as ironic that the sanctuary he sought to heal his wound was the same one others saw as a place to spend their final days. Perhaps, as a reward for when he departed, he would make it a final day to be remembered.
Lowering himself into the grass at the edge of the parking lot, Big Brother studied the front doors. Two men wearing $1,000 suits — a month’s pay for most people in these parts — guarded the main entrance. Another guard stood 100 yards to the south in front of Emergency.
Federal agents, Big Brother guessed. But what were they doing at the hospital? They can’t be expecting me, he assured himself. Look at them — too obvious. They believe I’m in the woods, gone to ground beneath the dirt, hiding.
Which is where he would be if not for the rogue beast and his bloody wound. He could have survived for weeks, months even, hunting at night and hiding in his nest of dens by day.
So, why are they . . .
It came to him. Little Brother was alive. Somehow, the deputies got him to the hospital in time.
He began to laugh, muffling the noise with his hand. Little Brother could be made to suffer more for his cowardly deception. It was a gift.
Big Brother studied the guards at the main doors once more, the smile growing on his face. He hadn’t planned to enter through those doors anyway.
Keeping low to the ground, Big Brother moved silently through the grass. It took more time than he wanted to waste to get beyond the guards’ line of sight and across the dangerously open space of the parking lot. Finally, he pressed against the hospital wall, safe in the shadows, fighting off the pain that throbbed in his leg.
He had to keep his mind clear; concentrate on his plan.
The beauty of hospitals is their strict no-smoking rule. An addicted nurse, doctor or patient will always find a way to circumvent a fire-exit alarm in order to indulge in a quick nicotine fix. And once the pattern is set, every addict will search it out until the secret simply becomes part of an everyday routine.
It had been true of every hospital Big Brother was dragged to as a child. His mother seemed to believe that by visiting every sick and dying relative in the country, she would be assured of a few scraps when the wills were read. She was always disappointed.
Big Brother stuck close to the shadows as he made his way carefully around the building, trying each door he came to. Soon, just beyond a triangular-shaped concrete pillar, he heard voices: a man and a woman grumbling in the shorthand of their profession, cigarette smoke spewing from taut lips. Big Brother pressed himself deeper into the shadows, his eyes gleaming with the security of his genius.
The pair muttered on until their complaining merely succeeded in increasing their stress rather than relieving it. Soon, they butted out, pulled a wooden wedge from the door, and headed back inside.
As soon as their backs were turned, Big Brother dashed from his hiding place and ran for the door. His leg screamed at him to stop, pain stinging his eyes and stealing his breath. He didn’t allow it to prevent him from reaching his goal, and as the door swung closer to its automatic lock, his fingers slid into the narrow gap. The heavy door crunched against his knuckles with more force than he had expected and a bone in one of his fingers snapped.
Anger flared in his eyes as fresh pain jabbed into his brain, threatening to crack open his skull for release. Big Brother fought against the impulse to scream, trying desperately to calm himself with the thought he could stop the pain soon. Instead of noise, his throat released the contents of his churning stomach in a violent spew.
It took several minutes of deep breathing, his hand still pinched in the door, before he found the strength to pull it open and stagger into the deserted hallway. His face was pale with shock and loss of blood, his brain muddy and unfocused.
At the end of the hallway, a door opened into the main foyer. Beside it, climbing upwards was a concrete stairwell. Big Brother pressed close to the narrow pane of reinforced safety glass in the door and looked out. The foyer was busy with patients and doctors, federal agents and media. Everyone looked high on adrenaline and coffee.
“I’m here,” Big Brother panted quietly in a sing-song voice. “Turn around. Look at what you fear.”
A surge of energy began to flow through him, dulling his pain. He felt invincible, as if he had gone beyond this reality into one of his own creation. The sheep couldn’t hurt him — nothing could hurt him.
Big Brother turned his back on the door and headed up the stairs. He knew what he needed.
CHAPTER
52
Finn rubbed his eyes with curled fists before stretching arms and legs. He held the stretch until stiff muscles grew warm. His body ached from the back-alley beating, and his mind felt foggy with the rebirth of a recurring depression.
Selene’s killer was free and there was nothing he could do, but wait.
Pulling himself into a sitting position, Finn stared across the narrow gap between the beds at Julia’s sleeping form. From the state of her rumpled sheets, her sleep had been as restless as his. Even now, her eyelids flickered in dream and a low moan rumbled from tight, thin lips.
She wasn’t especially pretty, Finn realized, at least not in a vulnerable, Hallmark movie-of-the-week way. Her face was too thin, her body that of a worker rather than a model, yet she possessed strength of such quality that it forced you to overlook those minor flaws.
He laughed inwardly, recalling memories of his boyhood friend, Sal, who once described Finn’s future wife as an animated mouse. Finn never saw the mouse in Jennie’s face, and now he supposed another man would look at Julia and never notice the weak chin, impatiently shaped eyebrows, slightly crooked nose, thin lips or too pale and overly freckled complexion.
Finn was trained to find the faults in his own face in order to disguise them for the stage, but too many years of looking into cracked mirrors, he feared, had corrupted his view of others. Instead of seeing beauty, he noticed the flaws.
Julia groaned and her arms thrashed wildly for a second before relaxing. Finn wondered if she had returned to the cabin to replay the killer’s escape. Thinking back on it, he was amazed she stood her ground while the truck bore down. It was sheer luck that neither of them was killed: Finn by a bullet; Julia by the truck.
Julia thrashed again, spilling the sheets from her lean, ghost-white body. Her small, rose-tipped breasts were exposed and the valley between them gleamed with perspiration.
Finn crossed to her bed and covered her nakedness with the crumpled sheet, and then on impulse, leaned over to kiss her forehead. Her skin was cold, but the kiss seemed to calm her and the thrashing subsided.
Finn smiled, silently wishing she would open her eyes, wrap her arms around his neck, and kiss him back. He needed the reassuring touch and the quiet whisper of the magic words: ‘everything will be all right.’
To escape what he once was, Finn made Selene the center of his life. Now, without her, he discovered how desperately alone he truly was.
With a sigh, Finn padded softly across the cold floor to the bathroom.
JULIA AWOKE TO
the sound of water splashing against tile and the sound of someone singing. It was a pleasant voice, soft and melodic.
Julia sat up, suddenly flush with embarrassment as she wondered what her parents would think: Spending the afternoon in a cheap motel with a man who dressed as a woman.
The absurdity of the thought made her smile. She knew her mom would be too shocked to speak, but her dad would simply shrug and say: “It’s not the job that counts, it’s the man. We all got to make a living.”
Julia threw off the covers and dressed. Her uniform was musty from the rain and splattered in places with things she didn’t want to think about. She wished she had a clean one, but the thought of returning to her apartment made her glad she could survive the wrinkles for a few more hours.
The shower stopped and heavy feet slapped onto the linoleum floor. The bathroom door was slightly ajar, revealing one corner of the mirror over the sink. It was tough for Julia to resist a peek, but when she did, the mirror was too fogged to offer any detail.
When Finn appeared, his mud-spattered jeans were unbuckled to reveal the tops of white boxers. The rest of him was pink and glistening. He rubbed his short hair with a towel.
Julia stared at his muscled and hairless chest, grinning.
“What?” Finn asked, noticing her stare.
“I was just wondering.”
“Yeah?”
“How do you get cleavage?”
Finn laughed, but looked pleased with the question.
“I use a saline-filled bra with hard rubber nipples for the shape, but the fleshy illusion above that is simple. Watch.” He dropped the towel and flexed his chest. With one finger, he indicated the valley between his firm pectorals. “A dark blush, applied lightly, gives this area a deep shadow. I enhance that with a lighter highlight where I want to draw the eye, and this gives the illusion that I’m stacked. Now all you have to do is put on a tight, not-too-low-cut dress and the guys are drooling.”
“Maybe I should try that,” Julia said, the words escaping before she could stop them. Her cheeks reddened.
“It’s an old trick,” Finn said. “Tons of women use it. In fact, the top fashion models go a step further and actually tape their breasts together. It gives them that I’m-too-big-for-my-bra look.”
“And that’s what men want?”
Finn shrugged. “Men are visually stimulated. If I didn’t offer them the illusion that Veronique was going to accidentally burst out of her dress and expose herself, most of them wouldn’t listen to any of her songs.”
Julia cocked her head to one side. “You always talk about Veronique as if she’s a separate person, rather than another side of yourself.”
“She is separate,” Finn replied. “If she wasn’t, I could never be me. Veronique is my meal ticket, one that I’m proud of, but she only exists on stage.”
Finn finished dressing while Julia picked up the phone and dialed the station. She talked to the deputy on the front desk and hung up.
“The search party uncovered an underground burrow where they believe Rodney was hiding out, but all they found inside was a dead dog. They want me on guard duty at the hospital in an hour.”
Finn finished pulling a comb through his hair.
“Can you get me in to see the sheriff?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I need to ask him about this.” He produced the twisted gold band that he had removed from the skeleton’s finger in Big Brother’s garden.
Julia stared at it, her mouth open. “You weren’t supposed to remove that from the scene. It’s evidence.”
“Dental records will prove the body is Harold’s. You don’t need the ring.”
“Why do you?”
“It belongs to his widow and I plan to return it to her, but first I have to know why Harold was killed. I believe the sheriff knows the answer.”
Julia lowered her gaze. “I can’t believe Sheriff Marshall knew what his brother was up to. One of the victims was our coroner, Barbara MacDougall, and I think it’s pretty safe to say they were lovers.”
“I read about her in the paper,” Finn said. “There was no sign of a break-in and no evidence of resistance. She must have thought she was meeting the sheriff. Marshall had to know that. He had to know his brother was the killer, yet he never told anyone. He’s as guilty of these crimes as his twin, if not more so.”
“How do you mean?”
“The sheriff could have stopped the rapes of those students, but he didn’t. The question now is: why? What power did his brother hold over him; what dirty little secrets did he have in his possession to make the sheriff look away while he raped young men and eventually committed murder?”
“But you can’t think the sheriff . . .”
“Can’t I?” Finn asked. “Sheriff Marshall was the one who assigned you to investigate the rapes. No offense, but you haven’t even handed out your first speeding ticket yet. Have you never asked why you were assigned to be at the bar on the night Selene was killed? I certainly wouldn’t have expected you to handle it as well as you did. I never would have expected you to chase the killer and nearly catch him. I never would have expected you to listen to a freak who dressed as a woman and eventually end up on the killer’s doorstep. If you were the sheriff, what would you have expected?”
Julia’s eyes flashed in anger. “Damn you,” she said. “Just because I’m a rookie doesn’t mean I’m going to fuck up.”
“But you were supposed to,” Finn answered calmly. “Don’t you see that now? The sheriff wanted you to flounder around, wasting time, going nowhere. You were supposed to be the perfect scapegoat. Then, when he convinced his brother to take his show on the road, he would find some sucker like Wells to take the rap and he would lay it at your feet. Your success in breaking the case would exonerate him from assigning it to a rookie in the first place and everyone would forget about the death toll left behind.”
“You can’t prove any of that,” Julia said.
“No, I can’t, but I don’t need to. Once Rodney is captured, the case is closed. He’ll pay for Selene’s murder. All I want to know now is who killed Harold Abery and why.”