Evil to the Max (2 page)

“Yeah.” She knew Billy Joe’s Western Round Up well. It had, until last week, been a favorite hang out of hers. But murder had squelched her appetite for the whole party scene.

“So, in your ...
dream
, you’re a wino witnessing a couple of guys wearing Frankenstein and Dracula masks dumping a body.” He was quiet a moment. “Guys that you, as the drunk, of course, can’t even identify.”

“I bet we’ll find out he knows a lot more if the detectives can question him. Like maybe a license plate number.”

He raised one blond brow. “If
he
knows it, don’t you as well?”

“Ummm, no.” Some things weren’t always clear in her visions.

The little punctuating silences he took were beginning to wear on her. She had no idea what they meant. Finally he said, “That’s why you need me. To point the cops in this wino’s direction.”

She glanced over to see him scrub one of those big hands down his face. “I figured they’d be more inclined to look for him if
you
told them about him,” she said.

“You figured I’d keep your pretty little ass out of jail.”

“That’s an incredibly sexist comment.” Sometimes she wasn’t quite sure how to take his backhanded compliments.

His laugh grated along her nerves. But he said nothing.

She pulled off the freeway, merged into street traffic, and headed for the alley alongside the Round Up. “Thanks, Witt,” she blurted into the relative silence of the Miata, “for not saying I’m crazy.”

“After knowing you two weeks, Max,
I’m
the one who’s completely lost it.”

She chanced a glance at him. “So you
do
think I’m crazy?”

“Nope.” He stared straight ahead.

“Do you think I’m lying?”

“Nope.”

If her hands hadn’t been on the wheel, she would have thrown them in the air. “Then what?”

“Just wondering why there’s crime scene tape around that alley by the Round Up.”

Her heart skipped a beat, and her foot slammed on the brakes.

A crowd hovered like flies twenty feet back from the mouth of the alley. Yellow tape fluttered in the breeze. An ambulance, the words MORGUE stenciled in red letters across its rear doors, was parked at an angle across the access. A black-and-white sat nose-to-nose with it. Two more were parked across the street.

Witt hunched forward in his seat, looking out the windshield. “Exactly how many of these dreams have you had, Max?”

She rolled her lips between her teeth, then blew out a breath. “There was Wendy Gregory,” the case Witt had solved last week, “and before that, a child murdered near San Antonio Park.”

He looked at her, something unreadable in his blue gaze. “Jesus, you were
that
lady?”

She listened for the denigrating tone, couldn’t find it, then resented the way he said “lady” on principal. “I’m surprised you didn’t find that out when you were investigating me.”

“Suppose I didn’t dig deep enough.” He yanked open the car door, climbed out, then peered in the opening. “I’ll handle this. You stay here.”

“But—”

“Stay out of it, Max.”

“You need me—”

“If
I
ask the questions, they’ll think I was a cop driving by who’s a little curious.
You
ask, they’ll bring you in for knowing too much about the crime, not to mention that smart-ass mouth of yours. Cops really hate a smart mouth.” His gaze flicked to her lips. “Even if it’s as kissable as yours.” He looked down the sidewalk at the bustling crime scene. “Doubt they’ll be as gullible as I was.” He slammed the door.

He thought she had a kissable mouth. Wow.

* * * * *

Half an hour later, Witt grabbed her arm and propelled her back toward the Miata. “I told you to wait in the car.”

She jerked out of his grasp. “I hate being left out.”

He gave her a look, definitely skepticism this time. “Right. Guess that’s why you work as a temp, live in a studio apartment with a no-name cat, and wear black all the time.”

Whoa. All this from a man whose average sentence length was five words or less, generally without pronouns. “Black happens to be my favorite color.”

“Mine, too, when you’re wearing it with those heels of yours.”

“And the cat’s name is Buzzard. Not that it’s any of your business.” She ignored
his
remark since it was another of his sexual innuendoes designed to push her buttons.

“Typical.”

She crossed her arms and glared. “What?”

“That you’re not content to let me do what you asked me to do.”

She sighed and looked over his shoulder at the crime scene. The number of uniformed cops had doubled. A police photographer and a tech had arrived fifteen minutes ago in a utility van. The camera had begun to flash almost immediately, covering the dumpster from every angle. The tech had armed herself with latex gloves, plastic and paper bags, test tubes, scrapers, fingerprint dust, notebooks ... an endless array of paraphernalia.

And Witt had been utterly at home talking with the two detectives.

Max felt excluded, and not just from the action. She reached into her purse for her keys, then went for overkill to hide her childish irritation. “Oh please, Detective Long, I’m so sorry. Tell me what you learned.”

The smile was slow to grow on his face, but quite devastating when complete. “Love it when you mock me. Gets me all hot.”

Her face flamed. That wasn’t quite the reaction she’d expected. Or wanted. “Be serious. What you learned was that the garbage men found her around five a.m. That she looked like she’d been there at least a day. No I.D.”

“Just what do you need
me
for, Max? Can’t be detecting.” Both brows went up. “Must be sex.”

She kept her mouth shut. At least on that subject. “Did you tell them about the wino?”

His mouth quirked. “You’ve got a one track mind, Max. Too bad it’s always on murder. And no, didn’t mention him.”

She pouted.

“Gotta pick up my car back at the station, handle a few things in my
own
jurisdiction, then I’ll be back to check on the situation.”

“I’ll come with you.“

He looked at her with a definite you-might-be-crazy-but-I-sure-as-hell-ain’t expression. “Don’t think so.”

She persevered. “Why not?”

“They
flirt
with pretty women. They
talk
to other cops. Don’t need any help.”

“That’s sexist.”

“We’re a sexist bunch.”

Wasn’t
that
an understatement. Max decided the better part of valor was to give in. “Fine. But you’ll remember to tell them about the wino, right?”

He gave her that smile again. Too damn cute for words. “Buy ’em a drink at the local cop hangout, see if any new details have surfaced, and the rest I’ll play by ear.” Period. Close quote. End of subject. He looked at the keys in her hand. “You want me to drive?”

She hugged the ring to her chest. “No one drives my car but me, hotshot.”

Witt walked around to the passenger side. Max put her hand on the door. Her fingertips tingled. She closed her eyes and for just a moment, something sparkled brightly against her lids.

Diamonds.

Tell him
, Cameron’s ghostly voice whispered in her ear.

“Witt.”

He looked at her over the roof of the car.

“Her name is ... was Tiffany.”

Chapter Two

Witt’s reaction to the Tiffany tidbit had been an icy stare over the roof of Max’s Miata and an irritatingly uncomfortable silence the entire drive back to Witt’s station. She’d dropped him off with barely a goodbye.

And here she was on a Monday night, dateless—purely by choice, of course, nothing to do with Witt’s refusal to let her tag along on his “mission”—and jobless. Murder was hell on a steady temp job.

She’d been a damn fine accountant in her other life, having made manager before she was thirty. Two years ago, a partnership at KOD—Kirby, O’Brien, and Dakajama—had been on her horizon, too.

Then Cameron walked in on a robbery at the corner 7-11. And never walked back out. She’d suddenly become a widow, and the partnership had tasted like cardboard in her mouth. She’d quit KOD, sold the condo, the furniture, Cameron’s motorcycle, and his silver Porsche. Now she temped, lived in one room on the second floor of a renovated Victorian, and talked to her husband’s ghost. He talked back.

Being jobless meant she could sleep in tomorrow, which meant that tonight she could prowl. At the Round Up. Not for excitement, of course, but for the wino. The one who’d hidden between two dumpsters in the alley and witnessed Dracula and Frankenstein throw out Tiffany’s body like yesterday’s trash.

Wearing tennies, jeans, black turtleneck and sweatshirt, she left her twenty-by-twenty square studio apartment a little after eleven p.m. The Round Up would still be open, though on a Monday night, the crowd would be thin. But Bubba worked on Mondays, and she’d have the big bouncer to run to if she got into trouble. She believed in taking care of herself, not acting stupid.

The lot was far from full, only the spaces along the front of the bar taken and a few vehicles clustered around lamp posts lighting the parking area. Even from this distance, the music beat against the windows of her Miata. Outside, three smokers huddled around the cigarette can by the front door.

Max parked the Miata at the far end of the Round Up’s parking lot, closest to the mouth of the alley. It was darker there, eerie so far from the pools of light. The yellow crime scene tape flapped nearby. It never occurred to Max to fight the visions, to fight getting involved. At least, not this time. She’d tried before and learned there were no alternatives.

The visions would hound her until she found justice for the victim.

Max climbed from the car, armed with a heavy, black Mag-Lite.

Take the pepper spray
, Cameron urged, and she felt a surge of warmth. He was near. She could be less afraid. He’d made her feel that way when he was alive, had continued after his death.

A burst of laughter blew through the doors of the Round Up, but no one paid her any heed. She held the flashlight in her left hand, the pepper spray retrieved from the glove box in the other.

Though the tape was still up, the alley was empty, and no policeman stood sentry. She slipped under the yellow barrier. The sweet, sickening smell of putrefaction hit her like a wall. Breathing through her mouth was just as bad. She could taste it.

Three dumpsters sat in the wide lane. The Round Up’s alley door was closed, but music vibrated against the concrete walls. Moving down the lane running behind the dancehall, she scanned with the Mag-Lite for clues the police might have missed. Yeah, right. But she could hope. Hunched over, her back ached. The closer to the row of dumpsters she got, the louder the music, the laughter, and the voices became. And the more alone she felt. She put her hand to the wall and felt the people inside. She craved the excitement, the anonymity. The power.

Concentrate
, Cameron prodded.

She’d heard no music in the dream. Tiffany’s body had been dumped after closing, or else the drunk had been deaf. Ten feet into the lane, she turned, looked back, tipped her head to the left, then the right. Yeah, the view was right. The car she’d seen in her vision had arrived from the east end of the alley. She kept walking, reached the first of the bins, trailed her hand along it without quite touching.

No, that wasn’t where they’d dumped the body.

She gave the second can, Tiffany’s temporary resting place, a wide berth. She wasn’t ready for it.

Max moved beyond the dumpster to the space where, in her vision, she’d huddled in a man’s body. He’d taken his bottle of Gallo with him. Or the police had impounded it as evidence. The alley had been stripped clean from one end to the other. Not a clue to her dream drunk’s identity was left behind.

Why is the wino so important
? Cameron’s voice was just a thought inside her head. She didn’t have an answer. Except that he
was
important. Somehow.

She turned back to the second dumpster, the one she’d avoided. Hand lifting slowly, as if the appendage didn’t belong to her, she put her fingers against the metal and closed her eyes. Hot. Molten. Sizzling. Like Tiffany. Burning with life. A bright flame blazing blue in the center.

Fingertips still in contact with blistering metal, Max remembered pieces of her vision, then let herself tumble into it again.

Her stomach rolled with the bad wine she’d sloshed down, rotting garbage singed her nostrils, and she was seeing double.

Not she. He. Max looked down at stained jeans and a tattered, once-white T-shirt she
—
no, he
—
wore. Arms long and bushy, the right one undulated with the tattoo of a black and red snake coiled round and round the biceps and down the outside of the elbow, its tail disappearing into the nest of dark hair on the forearm.

She
—
he
—
fished his precious locker key from his pocket as two cars pulled over at the end of the alley. Rolling the plastic top between his fingers like a talisman, he watched four people climb out to open their trunks at precisely the same moment. The picture staggered, then merged into one. One car. Two people. One was dark, its cloak flapping in the wind like the wings of a vulture. The dark legs of their pants disappeared into the concrete, as if they didn’t have any feet, as if they’d somehow grown from the stench of the alley. They wore masks like horror movie fiends that never died. Dracula. Frankenstein. Staring at them, he believed, like a child, that monsters were real.

He pressed back between the two shithole dumpsters, clutching his key in his fist. The great metal box clanged, shuddered, and when he eased around the corner to watch with one eye, the two stood almost on top of him. He snapped back, scrambling as deeply as he could. A bang. Muffled voices. A grunt. Something hit the bottom of the can, the blow softened by layers of stinking trash. The top crashed down, sending shock waves through his head. Footsteps receded, the slam of a car door, then another. They were gone. Crawling forward on his knees, he saw he was alone in the alley. Something shiny gold flashed on the concrete. He picked it up, fingered the smoothness, and put it in his pocket. Climbing hand to hand, he stood fully on his feet, lifted the lid. And almost puked despite the cast-iron quality of his stomach.