He turned around. “I don’t need to know who he is, I understand that. But I need something…I dunno…something.” He sat up. “Like why he hates us. Can you tell me that?”
“I can tell you what I think. A lot of it comes from your dad.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“It’s hard to explain. I thought about it a lot, though, at night in prison, when I couldn’t sleep.” She took a beat, aware that her explanation was important to him. “I know this is kind of round about, but…to start, I want you to imagine a very, very smart man. The thing is, he has no conscience. The way your dad put it—‘a part’s missing’. And he’s totally, totally ambitious. Unstoppable. Picture some kind of rapidly evolving creature—a predator—a predator who can be one thing while he’s doing another without anyone ever knowing it.”
“That’s too weird.”
“Yes, I know” She pressed thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose. “But please hear me out.” She lowered her hand. “You can’t understand this guy in any of the normal ways. The next piece—and this is important—this man can fool anyone. On the surface he’s charming, smart, fair, sincere…you can’t imagine. And in some ways he is that person. But what you have to remember—always—is that when he smiles, even when he cries, he’s on task, after something. He’s a savage predator with a great big brain.”
Billy’s face was grim. “Like psycho?”
“Not exactly. He knows what’s real. The thing is that no one knows what’s real about him. He’s very, very careful, what you’d call a control freak. I think that if you cross him, or even worry him, he hunts you down quietly…patiently.”
“Which is why he has these pictures.” He pushed them off the couch. “And knows all about me.”
“I think so, yes.”
“But why us?”
“Your dad figured out something he had done years ago. He tied this guy to a murdered Russian gangster, a gangster who had stolen millions of state-owned Russian rough diamonds. Your dad told me the bare bones of the story. To make a long story short, the same guy that’s after us, he got away with millions in rough diamonds, and he got away with murder.” She watched Billy stewing. She didn’t blame him. “That’s how he got his start, and now people believe he’s this big upstanding success. He sees me as his weakness, his Achilles heel. And it makes him crazy. He can’t stand that I know what he did, what he really is. He just can’t stand it.”
“Why didn’t he kill you too?”
“He tried, in prison. I think that was part of his plan all along. Think how carefully he orchestrated everything that happened. He made it look like your dad disappeared with stolen drug money, and I was left holding the bag on a drug deal gone bad. That elaborate smoke screen doesn’t work if I’m dead. No, he waited until I was in prison…waited until no one would connect my death with your dad’s so-called disappearance. Only the murder-for-hire didn’t work, and then I threatened to expose him if anything else happened to you or to me. I wrote down what little I knew, what I suspected, and he backed off. Until I got out, it was a stand off. Now, I don’t know, something changed and I don’t even know why. I don’t…” Her voice trailed off.
Billy ran both hands through his long hair. “Can we go to the police?”
“With what? We have no evidence. None. Without your dad, we can’t tie him to anything. And remember, he’s this big shot. They’d believe him when he said I was just a crazy ex-con.” She touched his arm. More than anything Corey wanted to be a mother who solved problems for her son. Instead, she kept causing them…awful problems that no fifteen year old should ever have to face…problems that left her teenaged son helpless and unable to move forward with his life…and she had saved the worst for last. “And if I ever did that, he’d find some way to hurt you.”
Abe was on hold for Dick Jensen.
“Jensen,” a raspy voice said.
“Mr. Jensen. This is Dr. Abe Stein. You called about one of your supervisees, Corey Logan.”
“Yeah. You doing the eval?”
“I am.”
“So you know, she already missed a meeting with me,” Jensen said. “She just didn’t show.”
“That doesn’t sound like Corey,” Abe reflected. “She’s been punctual whenever we’ve had a meeting.”
“Doctor, I found a false ID in her vehicle. I got a witness that swears she left the jurisdiction. I wouldn’t be surprised…she just takes off.”
“Why would she do that? She wants her boy back.”
“Why? Who cares why?” Jensen asked, impatient. “Prisons are full of people who made bad decisions.”
What? “She says she was framed. She says she’s being set up again.”
“Doc, how long you been working with felons?”
“Six, seven years.”
“I been doing it more than twenty. Why is it I never get a guilty one?”
“I think you should give her a chance,” Abe persisted. “She’s a good mother and she wants her son back. She’s motivated—”
“She stabbed someone inside with a pencil.”
“Self-defense.”
“Think about this,” Jensen said, flat. “It’s my nuts if she pencils you.”
“You’re wrong about this—” He heard a click. Dick Jensen was gone.
Abe dialed Corey’s cell phone. He left a message to call, anytime.
The Bremerton ferry pushed past the southern shore of Bainbridge Island, and the Jenny Ann rocked on its strong, rolling wake. Corey hardly noticed. She was below, stowing whatever she couldn’t leave behind. Sally had come through. She had spoken to the foster mother at Billy’s group home and organized it so that he could go back. Corey thought he would keep his cell phone on. At least she had gotten through to him; he understood that their trouble was real. Billy was, she reminded herself, a Logan, and Logans knew when to hunker down.
She would head north to the San Juan Islands, then on to the Gulf Islands in Canada. On the trip, she would have time to think—think about what to do, where to go, what to tell Billy. She had promised him that she would make things work for him. She would keep her promise, though she didn’t know yet how she would do that. It would be hard to come back. Ever. If she left the country, she would be in violation of the terms of her probation. She looked for the pair of eagles that nested behind her cabin. She found the male, perched atop a fir tree overseeing their nest. Corey watched it, aware that the life she had always hoped for was fading away.
She checked her cell phone for messages, hoping for a message from Billy or Sally. No, there were two messages, though, both from the disappointing Dr. Stein. She called him back, and got his answering service, of course. “This is Corey Logan returning his calls…yes…tell him I said goodbye. I’m leaving town…yeah, tell him turtles like frozen beef hearts, the mini cubes.”
Fifteen minutes later she was cruising between the fish farms, north, past Fort Ward. She would push on tonight until she was tired, not so wound up anyway. Tomorrow, she would cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca on her way to Canada. Corey opened a wheelhouse window. She wanted to feel the breeze on her face. The sea breeze and the smells of Puget Sound were things she could count on.
Her cell phone rang. She checked the incoming number, Dr. Abe Stein. She had nothing left to say. Corey let it ring.
Seven
“Dinner tonight?” Nick asked Jesse. He was sitting at his desk sizing up the city’s two new stadiums