Nowhere to Run. Nancy Bush
had been a plainclothes policeman with the small Rock Springs police force and completely out of his realm working with children. But that didn’t excuse him. And he hadn’t given up after that first interview. Oh, no. He’d come back to the house as soon as she’d gotten out of the hospital. By that time she and Hague had a neighbor woman taking care of them but Liv would not go into the kitchen. She was in the den when the officer came to interview her, and this time she was on her own with him . . . and the panic started to rise.
He tried a little harder, but Liv had lost trust completely.
“Try to think back to the night your mom died,” he told her, smiling at her through his teeth. She recognized that he was trying to be kind, but his smile just creeped her out all the more.
“Okay,” she said in a small voice.
“Don’t think about your mom. Think about the kitchen.”
Panic swelled. She saw the table and the sink and the window. “It was really dark. The outside was coming in,” she said.
“Yes. The back door was open,” the officer said, nodding. “Do you know who went out the door?”
“My dad?”
“You think your dad went through the door?”
“Mama was holding her face.”
“Your dad told me they had a fight. Do you know what the fight was about?”
That made Livvie think hard, but she shook her head.
“Have they fought before?”
“Yeah . . . Mama hit him once.”
“Your mama hit your dad?”
“I think he hit her, too,” Livvie said solemnly. “That’s why she was holding her face.” Then, remembering Mama, she started shaking and hiccupping.
“Now, be a big girl and stop crying. I need your help. Your mama needs your help.”
“Mama’s dead. Mama’s dead!!!”
“You can help her.”
“You’re lying! Mama’s dead!” Livvie wailed and clapped her hands over her ears and the policeman left the den, said something mean to the neighbor lady and slammed the front door.
After that the police gave up trying to interview her, though the social worker questioned Livvie further about her parents’ relationship, which created havoc for her father and was probably partially to blame for their chilly relationship ever since. The police questioned Albert Dugan thoroughly, and he’d been furious with Liv for telling tales. Still, he admitted that he and Deborah’s relationship had been tempestuous. He might have slapped her . . . once . . . or twice . . . but she’d hit him, too. He admitted to slapping her the night of her death before he’d stalked out the back door. Deborah had bitten him and he’d struck without thinking. But he was so sorry. So, so sorry.
It was also why Mama had said, “I’m done,” Liv was pretty sure.
Even so, to this day Liv wasn’t sure what the truth had been between her parents. Her father swore they’d loved each other . . . well, at least he’d loved her . . . but then she’d taken her own life and there had to be a deep-seated reason for that, and he just couldn’t understand it. He’d never agreed that Deborah had committed suicide. Wouldn’t talk about it. Within the year after her death he married Lorinda, and the whole family moved from the house with too many memories to another one across town. Employed by the forestry department, Albert pushed his old life behind him, and made a new one. Liv understood he was as haunted by the events of that night as she was, maybe in a different way, but in one just as powerful. Deborah’s death had affected and shaped his life from that day forward.
As it had Hague’s . . .
Now Liv climbed in the rattling elevator with the accordion door, slamming the handle shut, watching the floors pass as she headed for the third story. She let herself onto the hallway with its scarred wooden surfaces and scents of floor wax and dust and overcooked vegetables, and walked quickly to Hague’s door.
After their mother’s death, the policeman had interviewed Hague, too, for all the good it did. Hague had babbled about “that man.” The authorities had looked around for help but no one seemed to know what he was talking about. Liv asked him later, when they were alone, and he squirreled under the blankets of his bed and said, “Zombie man. Kill you. Kill you!” And he was crying and laughing and crying some more.
He’d scared the living daylights out of Liv, who ran to her own room, hiding beneath her covers. Later Hague said Mama had a friend. “A friend!” he’d yelled at the authorities. “Mama’s friend!”
They, in turn, labeled “the friend” Deborah Dugan’s Mystery Man.
Liv never mentioned Hague’s zombie man comment to the police, nor that he’d also said kill you in the same reference, like he’d said when he’d been sitting in his high chair, if that’s what he’d said that day; she’d never been completely sure. And she didn’t know then that his words were the first inkling of the behavioral changes that would send Hague down, down, down in a descending spiral that would last until his life to date.
“Hello, Olivia.”
Della Larson, Hague’s companion, stood in the open doorway, answering Liv’s knock. She leaned her head back and crossed her arms, assessing Liv suspiciously; behind her the place looked like a dark hole. Hague didn’t like lights, or fresh air, or anything remotely different. Unless, of course, he chose to do an about-face himself, which happened occasionally.
Della was older than Hague by about a decade and was a nurse-cum-attendant-cum-friend and maybe lover. She’d been with Hague for most of his adult life, ever since his release from Grandview Hospital, the mental institution for teens where he’d been sent briefly while Liz was at Hathaway House. Even though Liv had been adopted by the Dugans—a fact the birth certificate she’d just received spelled out clearly—and wasn’t related to Hague by blood, it sure seemed like mental illness relentlessly plagued their family. Hague was a genius with a 160 IQ but it didn’t mean he knew how to live in this world. Maladaptive was the word often used to describe his behavior. On that, Liv was way ahead of him, though her problems had been diagnosed as derived from mental trauma, not from a mind that moved in ways the rest of the so-called normal humans couldn’t understand. As the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said—as quoted by Della more often than Liv cared to count—“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
That and a dollar would buy you a newspaper. Maybe.
Della’s white-blond hair was scraped into a bun at her nape and her icy blue eyes raked over Liv as if she were someone she’d never seen before. It irked Liv, but then she knew it really was a reflection of the suspicions her own brother held inside himself as well.
“You didn’t call ahead,” Della said.
“Hi, Della,” Liv said. “The last time I called the line was disconnected.”
“It’s been reconnected for over a month.”
“Under whose name?”
She hesitated briefly. “Mine.”
“No matter what you may think of me, I’m no mind reader,” Liv said. “I’ll leave that to Hague.”
Her nose twitching in annoyance, Della stepped aside and Liv was allowed into the dim recesses of her brother’s den. The place smelled like bleach and lemon and everything clean, which was a relief given the fact Liv’s eyes were adjusting to a whole lot of clutter. Hague might be a hoarder of sorts, but everything had to be squeaky clean, per his decree and by Della’s hand.
“He’s in his room,” Della said, leading the way to the northwest corner of the apartment. She knocked on the door panels and when he barked, “What?” she said, “Your sister is here.”
A