Brazen Virtue (7 page)

“Some herbs.”

“Herbs? Like rosemary and stuff?”

“And stuff. When I get a chance I want to clear a little spot in the yard.”

Glancing out the window, she saw where he’d been working the day before. It was appealing to her to imagine a little herb garden springing up, though she didn’t know thyme from oregano. Herbs in the window, candles on the table. It would be a happy house, not stilted and tense like the one next door. She shook off the mood with a sigh.

“You’re an ambitious man, Ed.”

“Why?”

She smiled and turned back to him. “No dishwasher. Come on.” She offered her hand again. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

K
ATHLEEN SAT IN HER
chair, her eyes closed, the phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear. This one wanted to do most of the talking. All she was required to do was make approving noises. Nice work if you can get it, she thought, and brushed a tear from her lashes.

She shouldn’t let Grace get to her this way. She knew exactly what she was doing, and if she needed a little help to keep from losing her mind, then she was entitled to it.

“No, that’s wonderful. No, I don’t want you to stop.”

She bit off a sigh and wished she’d remembered to fix herself a pot of coffee. Grace had thrown her off. Kathleen shifted the phone and checked her watch. He had two minutes coming. Sometimes it was incredible how long two minutes could be.

She glanced up once, thinking she’d heard a noise, then gave her attention back to her client. Maybe she would let Grace take her to Florida for a weekend. It might
be good for her to get away, get some sun. And stop thinking for a few days. The trouble was that when Grace was around she never stopped thinking about her own faults and failures. It had always been that way, and Kathleen accepted that it always would be. Still, she shouldn’t have snapped at Grace, she told herself as she rubbed at her temple. But that was done now and she had work to do.

Jerald’s heart was beating like a trip-hammer. He could hear her, murmuring, sighing. That low laugh washed over his skin. His palms were like ice. He wondered how it would feel to warm them against her.

She was going to be so happy to see him. He dragged the back of his hand over his mouth as he moved closer. He wanted to surprise her. It had taken him two hours and three lines of coke, but he’d finally worked up the courage to come to her.

He’d dreamed about her the night before. She’d asked him to come, pleaded with him. Desiree. She wanted to be his first.

The hall was dim, but he could see the light under the door of her office. And he could hear her voice coming through. Beckoning. Teasing.

He had to stop for a minute, rest his palm against the wall. Just to catch his breath. Sex with her would be wilder than any high he’d pumped or snorted into his body. Sex with her would be the ultimate, the pinnacle. And when they’d finished, she’d tell him he was the best.

She’d stopped talking now. He heard her moving around. Getting ready for him. Slowly, almost faint from excitement, he pushed the door open.

And there she was.

He shook his head. She was different, different from the woman of his fantasies. She was dark, not blond, and she wasn’t wearing filmy black or lacy white, but a plain skirt and blouse. In his confusion, he simply stood in the doorway and stared.

When the shadow fell across her desk, Kathleen glanced up, half expecting Grace. Her first reaction wasn’t fear. The boy who stared back at her might have been one of her students. She stood, as she might have stood to lecture.

“How did you get in here? Who are you?”

It wasn’t the face, but it was the voice. Everything else faded but the voice. Jerald stepped closer, smiling. “You don’t have to pretend, Desiree. I told you I’d come.”

When he stepped into the light, she tasted fear. One didn’t have to have experience with madness to recognize it. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” He’d called her Desiree, but that wasn’t possible. No one knew. No one could know. She groped on the desk for a weapon as she gauged the distance to the door. “You’ll have to leave or I’ll call the police.”

But still he smiled. “I’ve been listening for weeks and weeks. Then last night you told me I could come. I’m here now. For you.”

“You’re crazy, I never spoke to you.” She had to stay calm, very calm. “You’ve made a mistake, now I want you to leave.”

That was the voice. He’d have recognized it among thousands. Millions. “Every night, I listened for you every night.” He was hard, uncomfortably hard, and his mouth was dry as stone. He’d been wrong, she was blond, blond and beautiful. It must have been a trick of the light before, or her own magic. “Desiree,” he murmured. “I love you.” With his eyes on hers, he began to unbuckle his belt. Kathleen snatched up her paperweight and heaved it as she dashed to the door. It grazed the side of his head.

“You promised.” He had her now, thin wiry arms clamped around her. His breathing came in gasps as he pressed his face close to hers. “You promised you’d give me all those things you talk about. And I want them. I want more than talk now, Desiree.”

It was a nightmare, she thought. Desiree was make-believe, and so was this. A dream, that was all. But dreams didn’t hurt. She heard her blouse rip even as she struggled. His hands were all over her, no matter how she fought and kicked. When she sunk her teeth into his shoulder, he yelped, but dragged her to the floor, ripping at her skirt.

“You promised. You promised,” he said over and over. He could feel her skin now, soft and hot, just as he’d imagined. Nothing was going to stop him.

When she felt him push inside her, she started to scream.

“Stop it.” The passion was exploding in his head, but not the way he’d wanted. Her screaming was tearing into him, spoiling it. It couldn’t be spoiled. He’d waited too long, wanted too long. “I said stop it!” He thrust harder, wanting the magnificence of all her promises. But she wouldn’t stop screaming. She scratched, but the pain only inflamed his need, and fury. She’d lied. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. She was a liar and a whore, and still he wanted her.

Flinging a hand out, she shoved, knocking over the table. The phone fell on the floor beside her head.

And he took the cord and wrapped it around her throat, pulling hard until the screaming stopped.

S
O YOUR PARTNER’S MARRIED
to a psychiatrist.” Grace rolled down the window as she lit a cigarette. The dinner had relaxed her. Ed had relaxed her, she corrected. He was so easy to talk to and had such a sweet, funny way of looking at life.

“They met on a case we were working on a few months ago.” Ed reminded himself to come to a complete stop at the intersection. After all, Grace wasn’t Ben. She wasn’t like anyone else. “You’d probably be interested since it was a serial killer.”

“Really?” She never questioned her fascination with murder. “I get it, the shrink was called in to do a psychiatric profile.”

“You got it.”

“Is she any good?”

“The best.”

Grace nodded, thinking of Kathleen. “I’d like to talk to her. Maybe we could have a dinner party or something. Kathleen doesn’t socialize enough.”

“You’re worried about her.”

Grace let out a little sigh as they turned a corner. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to spoil your evening, but I guess I wasn’t the best company.”

“I wasn’t complaining.”

“That’s because you’re too polite.” When he pulled into the drive, she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Why don’t you come in for coffee—no, you don’t drink coffee, it’s tea. I’ll brew you some tea and make it up to you.”

She was already out of the car before he could get out and open the door for her. “You don’t have to make anything up to me.”

“I’d like the company. Kath’s probably in bed by now and I’ll just stew.” She dug in her bag for her key. “And we can talk about when you’re going to give me that tour of the station. Damn, I know it’s in here somewhere. I’d have an easier time if Kath had remembered to leave the porch light on. Here.” She unlocked the door, then dropped the keys carelessly into her pocket. “Why don’t you sit in the living room and turn on the stereo or something while I get the tea?”

She shed her coat as she walked, tossing it negligently at a chair. Ed picked it up as it slid to the floor and folded it. It smelled like her, he thought. Then, telling himself he was foolish, he laid it over the back of the chair. He crossed to a window to study the trim work. It was a habit he’d
gotten into since he’d bought his house. Running a finger along it, he tried to imagine it at his own window.

He heard Grace call her sister’s name, like a question, then call it again and again and again.

He found her kneeling beside her sister’s body, pulling at it, shouting at it. When he gathered her up, she tore at him like a tiger.

“Let me go. Goddamn it, let me go. It’s Kathy.”

“Go in the other room, Grace.”

“No. It’s Kathy. Oh God, let me go. She needs me.”

“Do it.” With his hands firm at her shoulders, he shielded her from the body with his own and gave her two hard shakes. “Go in the other room now. I’ll take care of her.”

“But I need—”

“I want you to listen to me.” He kept his gaze hard into her eyes, recognizing shock. But he couldn’t cosset or soothe or tuck a nice warm blanket around her. “Go in the other room. Call 911. Can you do that?”

“Yes.” She nodded and stumbled back. “Yes, of course. 911.” He watched her run out, then turned back to the body.

Number 911 wasn’t going to help Kathleen Breezewood. Ed crouched down beside her and became a cop.

I
T WAS LIKE A
scene out of one of her books. After the murder came the police. Some of them would be weary, some tight-lipped, some cynical. It depended on the mood of the story. Sometimes it depended on the personality of the victim. It depended, always, on her imagination.

The action could take place in an alley or in a drawing room. Atmosphere was always an intricate part of any scene. In the book she was writing, she’d plotted out a murder in the Secretary of State’s library. She’d enjoyed the prospect of bringing in Secret Service, politics, and espionage as well as police.

That would be a matter of poison and drinking out of the wrong glass. Murder was always more interesting when it was a bit confusing. She was delighted with her plot line so far because she hadn’t quite made up her mind who the murderer was. It had always fascinated her to figure it out and surprise herself.

The bad guy always tripped up in the end.

Grace sat on the sofa, silent and staring. For some reason, she couldn’t get beyond that thought. The self-defense
mechanism of the mind had turned hysteria into numbing shock so that even her shudders seemed to be pulsing through someone else’s body. A good murder had more punch if the victim left someone behind to be stunned or devastated. It was almost a foolproof device to draw the reader in if done right. She’d always had a talent for painting emotions: grief, fury, heartache. Once she understood her characters, she could feel them too. For hours and days at a time, she could work, feeding off the emotions, reveling in them, delighting in both the light and the dark sides of human nature. Then she could switch them off as carelessly as she switched off her machine, and go on with her own life.

It was only a story, after all, and justice would win out in the final chapter.

She recognized the professions of the men who came and went through her sister’s house—the coroner, the forensic team, the police photographer.

Once, she’d used a police photographer as the protagonist in a novel, painting the stark and gritty details of death with a kind of relish. She knew the procedure, had depicted it again and again without a blink or a shudder. The sights and smells of murder weren’t strangers, not to her imagination. Even now, she almost believed if she squeezed her eyes tight they would all fade and reassemble into characters she could control, characters that were only real in her mind, characters that could be created or destroyed by the press of a button.

But not her sister. Not Kathy.

She’d change the plot, Grace told herself as she brought her legs up to curl under her. She’d do rewrites, delete the murder scene, restructure the characters. She’d change it all until everything worked out exactly as she wanted. All she had to do was concentrate. She closed her eyes and, wrapping her arms tight over her breasts, struggled to make it all play.

“She didn’t go easy,” Ben murmured as he watched the coroner examine the body of Kathleen McCabe Breezewood. “I think we’re going to find that some of the blood belongs to him. We may get some prints off the phone cord.”

“How long?” Ed noted down the details in his book while he fought to keep his mind off Grace. He couldn’t afford to think of her now. He could miss something, something vital, if he thought of the way she was sitting in the other room like a broken doll.

The coroner tapped a fist against his chest. The chili and onions he’d had for dinner kept coming back on him. “No more than two hours, probably less.” He took a look at his watch. “At this point, I’d put the time between nine and eleven. Should be able to hone it when I get her in.” He signaled to two men. Even as he rose, the body was being transferred into a thick black plastic bag. Very tidy. Very final.

“Yeah, thanks.” Ben lit a cigarette as he studied the chalk outline on the rug. “From the looks of the room, he surprised her in here. Back door was forced. Didn’t take much, so I’m not surprised if she didn’t hear.”

“It’s a quiet neighborhood,” Ed murmured. “You don’t even have to lock your car.”

“It’s harder when it hits close to home, I know.” Ben waited, but received no response. “We’re going to have to talk to the sister.”

“Yeah.” Ed tucked his notebook back into his pocket. “You guys want to give me a couple of minutes before you carry that out?” He nodded to the coroner as he started out. He hadn’t been able to prevent Grace from finding the body, but he could prevent her from being a part of what happened now.