Will they make me do more? I don’t want to . . . I really don’t want to ... but if they make me . . .
My head hurts with the thought. I press my hands to the sides of my head and hold myself together.
Gwen wants another appointment with me. I haven’t been “serious” about my problems. She knows. Deep down, she knows. Has she heard about Bette yet? If not, what will she do when she finds out?
I don’t want to contemplate killing her.
But it doesn’t matter. The victims, the men, need to be avenged.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cooper learned Eric Volker’s number and address from the police database. The man had moved into an apartment about a mile and a half from where Meghan and Dara Volker now lived. Neither living arrangement was in River Glen’s chichi West End, nowhere near Staffordshire Estates. The house was a two-bedroom ranch in a quiet neighborhood and the apartment was on the east edge of River Glen near Portland’s westside city limits.
On his way to Eric Volker’s, Cooper put in a call to both Dr. William Ryerson in Bend and Nadine Ryerson Campbell in Bellevue. He got them both, and when he explained that he was looking into the twenty-year-old attack on Emma Whelan, they both sounded underwhelmed about meeting with him. Understandable, but he wasn’t going to let that deter him. He made an appointment with Ryerson for Saturday and Nadine for Sunday. At first, she turned him down, but as the interview looked like it was getting pushed into the workweek, she’d changed her mind.
Cooper called Volker on his cell, but he didn’t pick up. When he got to his apartment, he found Eric was not at home. Volker called him back just as he was getting into his SUV and said he was at the River Glen Pirate’s game in Gresham, on the other side of the Willamette River and a good forty-five minutes away even without traffic. From the background noise, it appeared he was telling the truth. Easily found out. And if Volker had been there at kickoff, he couldn’t have attacked Bette.
Dara was also at the game, but Meghan Volker was home and answered Cooper’s call by inviting him over. He demurred. She was an outside cog and he wanted to make plans for the next day with Jamie. But then he realized he was putting off the woman when she might offer up something about her ex-husband, or Phil Kearns, or maybe even Bette, that would give him insight. Maybe, maybe not. But not meeting with her could very well just be putting her off.
He almost called Jamie again. He hadn’t told her what Race had said about the man in the ski mask. His more immediate issues were the attack on Bette, which could or could not relate to the attack on Marissa, the possibility that both Dara Volker and Vicky Stapleton had lied about Tyler Stapleton’s whereabouts the night of the attack on Marissa, and the rumor that Tyler had been with Katie Timbolt for a night of sex, burglary, and vandalism. A lot of mischievous, dangerous, and downright evil doings for River Glen, where the occasional bust of teen drinking and recreational drugs, DUIs and accidental deaths, made up the bulk of his detective work.
He kept himself from calling Jamie, though the urge was strong. He realized he’d already moved her to a level of trust he rarely allowed with other women. If he wasn’t careful, she would be as close to him as a lover and they hadn’t even shared one kiss. He was already thinking of her as a partner in some ways.
Meghan Volker met him at the door. Her hair was long and lush. Her dress was low-cut and short, revealing shapely legs. Her shoes were black platforms with tiny ankle straps. Her lips and face were Botox or something similar. She looked well put together, but there was that element of fakery in the background that somehow could never be fully erased.
“Detective Haynes,” she greeted him with a small smile.
She’d made a play for him once, shortly after he and Laura split. She’d been still hooked in with her now-ex at the time, and Cooper had steered clear even though she possessed a kind of tractor-beam pull that reached into his male core. He’d needed his bruised ego soothed some, but luckily, he’d kept his head. Not so a number of other men. And Eric Volker had gotten in physical fights with most of them.
She invited him in and led him to a living room done all in white with black accoutrements: a pole lamp straight out of the sixties, a lacquered tray upon which a silver carafe and two wineglasses sat, a white, fuzzy, wool throw draped across the end of an ottoman.
“What can I help you with?” she asked. “Would you like a drink? It would only take me a jiff to shake up some martinis.”
“Thanks, I’m fine.”
“Yes . . . but do you need a drink?” Again the small smile. It was clearly a practiced line.
“Bette Kearns was attacked by someone this evening in her home. She’s in the hospital, in surgery.”
The smile disappeared. She blinked in shock. “That’s why you want to . . . talk about Eric?”
“You knew about his relationship with Bette?”
“I don’t keep tabs on him, but he’s Dara’s father and he sees her occasionally. . . . Hospital? What happened to her? To Bette?”
“She was stabbed in the throat.”
“Oh my God!” She’d perched on the edge of the ottoman and now she jumped to her feet. “Well, it wasn’t Eric! He’s a brawler, not a killer. I mean, yes, he’s punched people, but it’s . . . not like that!”
“What’s it like?”
“It’s a game. That’s all. He’s a caveman. Wants to hold on to his woman. He picks fights with my dates. I don’t like it,” she added quickly, though
