Killing Me Softly (7 page)

She sighed and picked up her fork, scooped up a big piece of the omelet and popped it into her mouth.

He nodded in approval. “The guy I shot had family. Parents too decrepit to be a threat. Friends who didn't really give a shit if he was alive or not, he was such an asshole to everyone. And one brother. No record, but the guy hates my guts and made it clear he wasn't going to let it go when it hit the press that I'd been cleared of any wrongdoing in his brother's death. I got several threats from him right after—three phone calls, two letters, all documented. They started a watch file on him at the department, even sent a couple of officers by to read him the riot act, tell him he could end up doing time for harassing a police officer if he didn't cease and desist. I haven't heard from him since.”

She nodded. “He got a name?”

He pointed at her fork. She took a bite, and he smiled, because of the way she rolled her eyes as she did it. “His name is Everette Stokes. His brother, the one I shot, was Merle.”

“Okay, so now we have two suspects. Stokes and Cameron. I'm going to need a notebook.”

Bryan held up a hand to stop her and nodded to her left. She stopped speaking and looked up to see what he'd already seen.

The man from the counter. He'd finally got off his stool and headed over to the two of them. Bryan's mind clicked into cop mode instantly. Five-nine, one hundred
and eighty-five pounds, stocky and solid, sandy-blond hair cut short and doctored with too much gel so he looked like a hedgehog on top, blue eyes, no scars, one pierced ear. Cheap suit that was trying to look like a nice one. He had good taste but not enough money to go with it. No visible trace of a weapon. All of that in one sweeping glance.

Then the man was speaking to him. “Sorry to interrupt. You're Bryan Kendall, right?”

“Depends on who's asking.

“Doesn't matter, I already know. You're Bryan Kendall. And who are you?” he asked, turning his attention to Dawn.

“I'm—”

“She's none of your business.”

“Why are you in disguise, miss?”

Bryan held up a hand toward Dawn. “Don't say anything. He's a reporter.”

Then he looked at the guy for confirmation of what he'd guessed.

The guy sighed. “Mitch Brown,
Burlington Gazette
.”

“That would explain why I didn't recognize you,” Bryan said. “So you came all the way from Burlington? I must be big news.”

“The biggest. I already know the murder was a carbon copy of the work of the Nightcap Strangler. A crime spree solved by your friend—some say best friend, some say mentor—Nick Di Marco. I also heard they're going to arrest you for the murder today,” he said. “Any truth to that?”

“It's not like they'd give me the heads-up, Mitch.”

“And what about you, ma'am? What were you doing out at Officer Kendall's house? It's a crime scene, you know.”

Dawn blinked. “What makes you think I was—”

“I saw you walking down his driveway and back to your car. Who was that guy you were talking to?”

She licked her lips, shifting her gaze to Bryan and then back to the reporter. He didn't tell her to be quiet again, partly because he knew she was smart enough not to say too much, and partly because he knew it would piss her off if he acted like he thought otherwise.

She said, “Look, I really have no comment on any of this. But I don't want you thinking I've got anything to hide. So who I am is an old friend of Bryan's. My name is Dawn Jones. I'm from the West Coast, and I drove by his place out of curiosity and nothing more. The guy was a stranger, hitting on me. I shot him down.”

“Really? Because, frankly, miss, it looked to me like you were a little bit afraid of him.”

She shrugged. “Can't help what it looked like to you, can I? Although now that I think about it, thanks a lot for being chivalrous enough to come to my rescue. Oh, wait, you didn't, did you? You just stood there, watching a lone woman being harassed by a tank of a man, in the very same spot where another woman was murdered only days ago. Sweet of you. Do you think you could leave us alone to enjoy our breakfast now?”

He was rocked by her firm put-down, and it took him a moment to regroup. Bryan admired her even more
than he had before and had to fight not to smile at her tactics.

And then the guy cleared his throat and said, “Actually, I'd like to get a statement first. Bryan Kendall, did you kill Bettina Wright?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did?”

“Not yet,” he said. “And that's all I have to say. So if you don't mind…”

The guy turned back to Dawn again. “Just one more question, and it's a repeat. Why are you in disguise, Ms. Jones?”

“I told you, I'm not.” Sighing in frustration, she took off the sunglasses, pulled off the baseball cap and shook her head slightly so her hair fell around her shoulders. “Happy now?” she asked.

“Look, I'm just doing my job here.”

“Yeah, well, unless your job includes making sure my omelet gets cold before I can eat it, take a hike, okay?”

He smiled slightly, nodded fast and backed away, his entire demeanor suddenly friendly rather than aggressive. Bryan rolled his eyes, because he knew precisely why that change had occurred. It had taken place the second the man had seen Dawn without the getup.

She was that beautiful. Beautiful enough to stop a man in his tracks and change his entire train of thought.

Damn, he'd missed her.

She refocused on him. “I don't like that guy, Bryan.”

“He liked you,” he said.

“I don't care. Remember his name, if it's even real. Mitch Brown. It sounds made up to me. We should do a…a background check on him.”

“If you finish your omelet, I'll get Rico to do it today.”

She smiled and shoveled another huge bite into her mouth, still grinning as she chewed.

He knew why, too. This was feeling more and more like old times, and he was kind of glad it felt as good to her as it did to him. Hell, he knew the past was gone, that they couldn't go back. But this part of it, this team-sleuth thing they had going on, it was as good as it had ever been. Better, maybe. He hadn't wanted to enjoy having her back—but he
was
enjoying it, in spite of himself. And in spite of the fact that his entire life had been turned inside out.

They were still good together. And he was damned glad of that.

And yet, he was worried. “Put that gorgeous hair back into hiding. We need to finish our breakfast and get you out of sight again.”

“You think the Nightcap Strangler is staking out diners, looking for me?” she asked.

“I think if you keep catching the attention of every red-blooded male in Shadow Falls you'll find something more interesting to do than help me solve a murder.”

She tipped her head to one side and smiled, and he
knew she'd enjoyed the compliment. Damn, he had to be careful here. There was one thing he needed to remember, besides the fact that she was just the kind of woman the Nightcap Strangler, or his number-one fan, went after.

He also had to remember that she was going to leave him again. Either as soon as this was over, or as soon as she started seeing ghosts again. Whichever came first.

S
even hours later, Bryan's father dropped a hot-off-the-presses copy of the
Burlington Gazette
on the dining room table just as they were all gearing up for dinner. The first thing that caught his eye was a photo of Dawn—an old one. And it was just underneath a banner headline.

“What the hell?” Bryan said as he read the headline.

“What?” Dawn asked, leaning over his shoulder, looking at the paper. “Oh, no.”

Bryan began to read aloud, halfway down the page. “‘Dawn Jones was spotted today at the scene of the crime. Five years ago Ms. Jones was instrumental in saving the life of Blackberry, Vermont, chief of police Cassandra Jackson, some say because of her ability
to communicate with the dead, a talent her notorious father, the late Mordecai Young, claimed to possess throughout his criminal career.'”

She blinked and lifted her head. “Where did he get that photo of me? It's old, but…”

“Probably found it on the Net somewhere,” Josh said.

“So I guess keeping you from being seen is off the table,” Bryan muttered. “I don't like this.”

“We've really got to look into that reporter now,” Dawn said. “How does he know all this stuff about me?”

“I don't know, Dawn.” Bryan put his hand over hers where it rested on his shoulder.

“Don't hate him too much,” Josh said. “He's listing off suspects like appetizers on a Ruby Tuesday's menu. No names—he probably doesn't want to get sued—but he's punching a lot of holes in the police department's case against you, Bry.”

“Really?” Frowning, Bryan looked more closely at the article.

The phone started ringing just then, and Beth went to get it, then held it out. “It's Nick. He said to put him on speaker.” She thumbed a button, and said, “Go ahead, Nick.”

“You got a reprieve, Kendall,” Nick said.

Bryan lifted his head, looking at the phone. “What do you mean?”

“There's a reporter, a Mitch Brown. You see his piece in the Burlington paper?”

“Yeah, I was just starting to read it now.”

“Well, he claims there are people who need to be ruled out before anyone makes any arrests. He lists Bettina's ex-lover, the brother of the guy you shot in that standoff and an English lit professor who knew every one of the victims the first time around and, it turns out, knew Bettina, too.”

Bryan heard Dawn's sigh of relief, felt her hand tighten on his shoulder. “That's one more suspect than we have on our list,” she whispered.

Bryan nodded but tried not to get his hopes up. “I'm far from cleared, though.”

“True, pal. But you aren't going to be arrested today. This reporter did you a huge favor. The evidence hasn't changed in the least, and you still look guilty as hell, but the chief doesn't want the press turning on him on this one. So he'll give it another day or two, make sure he's covered his bases, not to mention his ass. Although I'd still like to kick this reporter square in the balls for plastering Dawnie's photo on the front page.”

“I really don't think I'm in any danger, Nick,” Dawn said.

“Yeah, well, you didn't live in Shadow Falls when the original Nightcap was stalking pretty girls who looked so much like you they could be your sister. Women were living in fear, Dawnie, and I remember it all too well. You be extra careful and stay safe until we get this guy, whoever he is.”

She nodded, warming a little at Nick's protective attitude. He was a decent guy. “Thanks, Nick. I will.”
Then she frowned, and Bryan could see the wheels turning in her mind. “Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“Who is this college professor Brown mentioned in his article?”

“Dead end. Nice lady, name of Olivia Dupree. I looked at her during the first round of this mess. And it's true enough, every one of the victims knew her. Most of them were students, and she was, too, at the time, so it makes sense they would know her. Bette did, too. But that doesn't mean anything more than that the killer moved in the same circles they did, or was picking his victims from among the student body.”

“Oh.”

She seemed deep in thought then, so Bryan took over. “Thanks a bunch for calling, Nick.”

“I'm glad to have some halfway decent news for a change. Have a good night.”

“Will do. Night, pal.”

Nick hung up, and Bryan sighed and turned to Josh and Beth. “What do you say we order pizza, rent some movies and try to put all this out of our minds and have a normal evening?”

His dad met his eyes and nodded. And he alone, Bryan thought, understood why he wanted a normal night tonight. It was because he knew this reprieve was only a temporary one. This might be his last normal evening for a long time.

 

I yanked the newspaper from the seat of the Thunderbird, pulling it toward me and blinking down at it
in the glow of the dashboard lights. Mitchell Brown. Bastard. He was getting in my way, and if it continued, he'd be next.

No, he won't.
The voice of the murderer inside me disagreed, just as he always did.
It's kind of fun, don't you think? He's throwing suspects out there because it'll sell more papers than a simple open-and-shut case would do. That's all.

“I'll fuckin' kill him.”

You'll fuckin' kill
her, my twin said. And as he said it, he shifted my eyes to the front of the newspaper again, where the pretty girl's photograph didn't come close to doing her justice. I'd
seen
her. She was way hotter than the grainy old black-and-white shot.

I swallowed hard and looked away, toward the house I'd been watching.

I told you it wasn't going to be just a one-time deal.

“I don't have a choice,” I told him. “The rookie has to go down for this. It's the only way. To make that happen, there has to be one more.”

One more?
His laughter filled the car, loud enough that I had to cover my ears to try to shut it out, but of course that did no good whatsoever.
One more? Listen to you! There are going to be lots more, my friend.
Lots
more.

“But not that one,” I told him, shifting my eyes to the newspaper again.

“Oh, buddy, you're not getting this, are you? That one is going to be the best one of all. Now get your ass
moving. You know better than to linger too long. Some one could see the car.

“No one would link it to me, anyway,” I said, but I opened the door and got out. The night air was cool on my face. I walked toward the silent darkened house and tugged the ski mask down over my face as I did. My gloves were on already, my kit attached to my belt.

Apparently my twin had decided to shut the hell up.

He was still with me, though. I could feel him riding along, aroused as all hell. He was slowly stroking his erection while I did all the work. And how fair was that?

I was erect, too, though doing nothing about it. That would come later, away from here, in private, where no DNA could get left behind. Not here. Not now. No matter how turned on I got.

I found all the windows closed and locked. So were both doors. But that wasn't all that much of a challenge to me. I knelt in the rear of the house and tapped the glass of one of the two casement windows there until I hit it hard enough to shatter it. A few pieces tumbled inward, onto the basement floor, but I was confident she wouldn't hear it two floors above, where she slept. God, I loved houses with basements. The bigger, the better.

I wiggled the rest of the glass loose, piling it on the ground beside the window, until I had a clean opening that wasn't going to cut me on the way through. DNA again. You had to be careful with that shit. Then I
squeezed through, feet first, and landed on the basement floor.

Nothing of interest there. A typical musty-smelling basement with a furnace, and piles of boxes here and there. I was interested only in finding the stairway up, and I did so without much trouble at all.

The door at the top wasn't locked. Of course it wasn't. I was a little amazed at how scared most women were about their cellars—it was a rare one who'd venture down to check the breaker box in the dark. And yet none of them ever put locks on their cellar doors. As if what they were so afraid of could only wait down there. As if it would never emerge into the aboveground sections of the house.

It's emerging now, baby!

“Shut up,” I whispered. But I couldn't even pretend I wasn't feeling the same exhilaration he was. My skin was tingling, my heart beating faster with every step. I could already see her delicate hands clawing at my gloved ones. I could see her body twisting and turning uselessly as I choked the life out of her. It would be good. And though I was only doing it because it was necessary, thanks to that damned reporter, I knew I was going to enjoy it. Maybe even more than the last one.

But not as much as the next one!

“There won't be a next one. This is unavoidable, but—”

There will be. And you already know who. Hell, you're wishing it was her right now, tonight. Let's pretend, why don't we? Let's pretend this one is her. It'll
be easy in the dark. And then we're going to leave what we brought, just to scare the hell out of her, because it'll be even better if she knows we're coming for her next. Her fear…God, we can eat it with a spoon, that delicious fear, from now until we take her. She is going to be our masterpiece, my friend. You know she is. The culmination of our life's work together.

I caught myself rubbing a hand over my bulging hard-on, right through the pants I wore. I shivered with pleasure but stopped myself. And then I walked up the stairs to the second floor, walked into her bedroom and stood looking at her as she slept.

I'd been determined to ignore him, my twin, my alter ego. But as I stared at her, the face I saw was not hers.

And a few seconds later, when I tightened the black silk stocking around her throat, it wasn't her I saw come awake in stark terror, eyes widening, hands clawing at mine and then at the stocking itself, her body twisting like a fish on dry land. Dying. It wasn't her I saw dying, surrendering her life to the power in my two hands.

It wasn't her I saw.

It was the beautiful Dawn Jones.

 

Dawn was up early, earlier than everyone else in the house. To be honest, she'd barely slept at all. Last night had been too…too much like a blast from the past. She and Bryan had watched a few episodes of
Magnum, P.I.
on DVD, because the show was a shared favorite, despite originally airing long before their time. Bryan's
dad had turned him on to it. Then Bryan had turned her on to it, and it had become one of their things.

So they'd watched TV and laughed at the shortness of the shorts on Tom Selleck's long, hairy legs, and praised the cleverness of the voiceover method of narration, and picked apart the flaws in the mysteries being solved. Beth and Josh had turned in early, but she and Bryan had stayed up, made brownies, eaten them topped with vanilla ice cream and talked and talked and talked.

They talked about the Blackberry Inn, and some of the more interesting guests who had come and gone. They talked about some of the hot rods she'd worked on in San Bernadino and their celebrity owners. They talked about baseball and restaurants, holidays and friends in common. They talked about everything except the murders and their relationship. Bryan had ruled those two topics off-limits from the beginning. At first it had driven her crazy—all those files, which they'd moved to the trunk of the Mustang, just waiting to be pored over. She was itching to dig into the case. But she did understand why Bryan needed a night off from all that. And given that Nick felt the reporter had bought Bryan some more time, she didn't mind all that much.

But as the night had worn on, it had begun to feel…intimate between them again, especially near the end, as the credits of the final episode ran. The room got all quiet, and when she looked at Bryan, sitting close beside her—but not touching—on the sofa, he was staring at
her with an expression in his eyes that told her very clearly that he was thinking about kissing her. And she knew that if he did, she would take him straight to her bedroom for the rest of the night. And he would regret that.

She almost considered it, anyway. But then she closed her eyes, lowered her head. “I don't know what's going on with me yet, Bry. I really don't.”

“What do you mean, you don't know what's going on with you? You've been taking pills, drinking too much and eating too little. You haven't been taking care of yourself at all. But at least the ghosts have left you alone. You came back home to help me get out of this mess I'm in—we both know you wouldn't be here otherwise. And I think we both also know that you'll be heading back into hiding the minute this is over. Right?”

She took a deep, slow breath. “The pills are to keep…keep the ghosts away.”

He lifted his brows. “They have
pills
for that now? I don't remember hearing about that in the latest round of FDA approvals.”

“The shrink thought I was imagining them, and attributed everything to anxiety and post-traumatic stress over my father's death. But the irony is, it turns out they work as well for real ghosts as imaginary ones.”

“And the vodka?”

“I wasn't drinking much. I just thought I might need something extra while I was back here. I really expected them to inundate me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The thing is, Bryan, they haven't. I haven't seen a single ghost since I've been back.”

“Well, with the pills and the booze…”

“I dumped them. I haven't taken a pill or even a drink since I've been here.”