do you know?” Clausen asked.
Her stomach roiled and she thought she might be sick. “Because I’m the target. This might sound like I’m reaching, but something like this happened a long time ago. About sixteen years ago, not far from the same place. I was forced off the road…I think it’s the same man.”
“You think the same guy was chasing you then, nearly twenty years ago, but you’ve been living in the Portland area ever since and he hasn’t bothered you?” Kirkpatrick was understandably skeptical.
“He failed the first time.”
Clausen exchanged a look with Kirkpatrick, who twisted her pen, then clicked it several times. “But he hasn’t accosted you since.”
“Not until last night. But that’s because of Jessie.”
“Who’s Jessie?” Clausen asked.
“Jezebel Brentwood. She was a friend of mine in high school.”
“The girl whose bones were just discovered,” Clausen said, his interest piqued. “The one the Laurelton cop McNally was here asking about.” He was nodding now. “McNally thinks there’s a relationship between her death and Renee Trudeau’s.”
They were catching on quickly now.
“Renee is—was Hudson’s sister.” Becca hitched her chin toward the door to his room.
“If you’re the target, then why kill her?”
“I don’t know. I think…I think it has something to do with Jessie’s murder.” Becca went on to explain the links, as she saw them, that Renee was digging into the past and had riled up the murderer, who then focused on her.
It had sounded so much more solid before she said it aloud. It was impossible to explain.
“Back to last night,” Kirkpatrick said, her eyes narrowing. “This guy who chased you, did he say anything to you?”
“He called me ‘sister.’ Said he was God’s messenger.”
“Hmmm. Maybe ‘sister’ as in the ‘we’re all sisters and brothers’ communal sense?” the woman cop suggested.
“It seemed more personal, but…” She shrugged.
“He say anything else?” Clausen asked.
She closed her eyes, remembered. “He called me the ‘Spawn of Satan,’ I think, then later said ‘Jezebel and Rebecca.’”
“Did any of it seem to make sense?” Kirkpatrick asked.
When Becca shook her head, Clausen said, “Sounds like he talks to God, or is doing the Big Guy’s bidding.” Clausen kept his expression neutral.
Kirkpatrick’s eyes held Becca’s. “Would you recognize his voice?”
“I don’t know,” she said, but as she remembered her struggle and panic, she nodded. “I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, but I think I would recognize his voice.” And the thought of it made her shiver. She prayed she’d never see him again, never hear the horrid, snakelike sound of his whispered curses.
“But you don’t remember anything that would make him identifiable? No tattoos or scars or facial characteristics.”
Becca shook her head. “I didn’t see him, but I do know that I knocked him good with that rock. He staggered and it gave me time to run. He may have some damage. A black eye or bruised forehead or something.”
“Anything that would send him to seek medical attention?” the woman detective posed hopefully.
“No.”
“Doesn’t sound like that kind of guy, even if he needed it,” Clausen agreed.
After a few more questions about her confrontation, hoping to learn something more about her attacker, anything that might help, they gave up. Clausen promised to return to speak with Hudson when he awoke. “If you think of anything else, call,” Clausen insisted and handed her his card.
“I think you’d better see this.” Gretchen, subdued for her, waved Mac over to her desk.
“Just a sec.” He headed for the break room and a cup of coffee before wending his way back to Gretchen through the maze of desks where cops were already on phones, booking suspects, going over notes, and shuffling paperwork.
Even the Homicide Department was cranking it up. Aside from the regular caseload there had been a fight in one of the local watering holes. Another drug deal gone bad, and one twenty-three-year-old had been stabbed and died on the way to the hospital. Another couple of kids had been drag racing on 26. A bad accident, one kid in the hospital, not expected to make it, another dead. The driver, of course, suffered a few cuts and a broken leg.
Gretchen was seated at her desk, printouts spread upon the neat surface, her computer screen glowing.
“I’m not here long,” he said, yawning, stopping close enough to look over her shoulder. He was driving back to the beach after a perfunctory appearance at the station. He’d been up half the night after dealing with Hudson and Becca’s accident, and he’d been back and forth on the phone with the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department and rereading the notes he’d taken.
He’d dropped off Levi and Ringo with Connie on his way to work this morning and Connie, in her gracious way, had said, “This is emotional blackmail, telling Levi that he can keep the dog here when you know I’ll be the one taking care of it.”
“For a day. I should be back tonight.”
“Should,” she repeated. “I know you, Sam. You’ll get caught up in this case, this same damned case involving that Brentwood girl, and you’ll lose track of time, or have to go…investigate something somewhere and you’ll leave me holding the bag again.”
“One. One day. That’s all.” Over her shoulder he saw into her house, warm light glowing softly, the corner of a modern green couch, the smell of cinnamon and some other spices wafting from the kitchen. “You just have to keep the dog one day. He belongs to a victim. As soon as she’s out of the hospital she’ll want him back.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of the damned pound? Isn’t that where strays are usually kept?”
“He’s not a stray.” Mac’s patience was thinning.
“And one way or the other, I end up the bad guy. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.” Connie’s face was getting redder by the second.
“I’ll be back tonight.”
“Tom’s allergic,” she said, folding her arms under her breasts and looking imperiously down from the doorway, but Mac was already halfway to his Jeep.
He’d known she would keep the dog. Not for him. But for Levi.
Now Gretchen pointed to one of the copies of documents she’d dug up. “You tell Rebecca Sutcliff that Jessie Brentwood’s her sister?”
“Haven’t
