Dead Reckoning (15 page)

 
Kate jerked awake abruptly. Groggy and disoriented, she fumbled for the alarm and punched the snooze, but it didn’t stop the incessant noise. By the fourth ring she was awake enough to realize it wasn’t her alarm drilling into her brain, but the phone.

The first thought that struck her was that something had happened to Kirsten. Kate had had enough tragedy in her life to know phone calls in the middle of the night were never good.

Rolling onto her side, she reached for the phone, “Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?” she repeated. “Is someone there?”

She could hear the faint hiss of an open line; she sensed someone on the other end. She could hear faint breathing. A slight rustle.

The hairs at her nape prickled. Gooseflesh raced down her arms. “Who’s there?”

“Check your front porch, Katie,” came a guttural, whispered voice.

Kate sat up straight, adrenaline shooting from her belly to her toes. “Who is this?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

A click sounded and then the line went dead.

For the span of several seconds, Kate sat there holding the phone, her mind racing in perfect time with her heart. All she could think was that the caller knew her name. He had her phone number, which made her uneasy because her number was unlisted. As an ADA, she dealt with some form of the criminal element on an almost daily basis. Even though the State of Texas kept her abreast of the release dates of prisoners she’d sent to prison, she’d gotten an unlisted number to keep some convict from calling her when he was released.

So how had this guy gotten her number? Who was he? And what had he meant when he’d told her to check the porch?

For an instant she considered calling 911. But with Dallas being one of the most violent cities in the nation, she knew something as minor as a prank call wouldn’t warrant sending an officer. What could the police do? The caller hadn’t threatened her. All she could do was report the incident to the phone company first thing in the morning and get her number changed.

Slipping into her robe, she opened the night table drawer and pulled out the mini magnum. Easing the hammer back with her thumb, she left the bedroom and padded down the hall and into the living room.

Around her the house was silent and still. Her footsteps were little more than a whisper as she crossed through the living room. At the front door she parted the curtain at the side-light and peeked out. Her vision was relatively unobscured. The porch was small, and she could see there was no one there. Then she spotted the small object about the size of a wadded-up sock on the welcome mat, and a chill raced through her.

Kate flipped on the porch light. The gun cocked and ready in her hand, she stepped onto the porch and looked around. “Who’s there?” she called out in her toughest voice.

The only answer was the hiss of wind through the trees.

Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she stooped to get a closer look at the object. If some prankster had thrown a used condom or something gross, she was going to . . .

Adrenaline struck her like a fist when she realized the object was a tattered blue bandanna. A bandanna just like the one used to bind her hands on that terrible night eleven years ago . . .

She heard her quick intake of breath. Nausea filled her mouth with the bitter taste of bile. She stared in disbelief. All the while her heart screamed a denial. This couldn’t possibly have anything to do with what had happened in Houston all those years ago.

But Kate didn’t believe in coincidence. Her logical mind knew the bandanna had not been tossed onto her porch randomly. Someone knew. And they were using that knowledge to frighten her.

The overriding question was who. Who would have something to gain by frightening her? Had some convict been released and decided to exact revenge against the woman who’d sent him to prison? Did it have something to do with the Bruton Ellis case? Or maybe the man who’d raped her and left her for dead had come back to finish the job . . .

Shuddering at the thought, Kate went back inside and locked the door behind her. Flipping on lights as she went, she strode to the kitchen, yanked open the drawer, and removed a plastic freezer bag from its container. At the small desk where she paid her bills, she opened the pencil drawer and removed a letter opener. Then she crossed back through the living room, checked the sidelights again, and opened the door. Kneeling, she used the letter opener to put the bandanna in the freezer bag.

She knew one of the trace evidence analysts at the Institute of Forensic Sciences. She could take it to him, pay for testing herself, and see what came back. But Kate knew that even if the thing was covered with blood or semen, unless a crime had been committed, there was nothing the police could do.

But how could anyone possibly know what had happened? Her parents had gone to great lengths to protect her and Kirsten’s privacy. Their names had never been made public. The only people who’d known about the sexual assaults were the police and hospital personnel.

Holding the mini magnum in one hand, the bag containing the bandanna in the other, Kate looked out at the trees surrounding the gravel driveway. “You make one wrong move, you son of a bitch, and I swear to God I’ll put a bullet in your heart.”

The night responded with a cold gust of wind that chilled her to the bone.

NINE

FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 7:23 A.M.

Frank had had a bad night. He’d had a lot of bad nights in the last year. Nights that were sleepless and black and endless. Judging from the pain zinging up his leg, this morning wasn’t going to be any better. Maybe even worse.

The doctor had warned him this could happen. He’d prescribed painkillers, which Frank was all too willing to take. But it was like trying to put out a forest fire with a straw.

The first tinges of pain had wakened him at midnight. At first, it had been a gentle ebb and flow that had lapped at the backwaters of his consciousness like tentative fingertips. But within an hour those waves had augmented to huge undulating monsters that had pulled him from sleep and into a black abyss of torment.

He’d been dreaming of that day at the café in Jerusalem. Of Gittel in her pretty blue dress. A smile so lovely it hurt just to look at her. A need so powerful he could barely bring himself to remember.

Even in sleep his mind could recall the moment with startling clarity. The violence of the blast. The shock of pain when his eardrum had burst. Searing heat that ran from his left buttock to his toes as shrapnel severed muscle and shattered bone. He saw blood against the cobblestone street. Black smoke billowing into a blue sky. He smelled burned flesh and singed hair and the coppery stench of blood. He could feel the heat of the fire burning his skin.

The nightmare was bad enough.

But the pain was worse.

By midnight it had been like death, black and vicious, and Frank thought he died a little more with every minute he endured it. At one A.M. he took the usual dose of muscle relaxers. An hour later he doubled the dose. By two forty-five he was sweating and writhing and cursing the very God who’d spared his life that fateful day one year ago. By four-thirty A.M., desperate and willing to do anything to stop the cycle of pain, he did the one thing he hated most and dug the powerful painkillers out of his medicine cabinet and downed them with vodka and tap water.

But not even the marvels of modern narcotics could ease the pain of a nervous system gone haywire. By the time six A.M. rolled around, Frank was starting to think death was a better alternative than the agonizing existence he’d been relegated to since a piece of shrapnel had shattered his leg. The doctors had saved the leg. With the help of a titanium rod and a small piece of bone from his hip, they’d even managed to keep him out of a wheelchair.