Pretty Dead (15 page)

“I couldn’t get six across,” the guy said. “Did you get six across? Beanie?”

“Dink,” Jay said.

“Never heard of that.”

“It’s a tough one,” Jay said.

“Humorous, though.”

“Right.”

“What do you think the underlying theme of this puzzle is?” Jay asked, admiring the finished piece, admiring the design and pattern of the layout. Because that was important too. He loved seeing the squares filled in with large capital letters, but he also enjoyed admiring the pattern. That was part of the satisfaction of a completed puzzle. Seeing the design was almost like looking at topography from an airplane.

“I don’t know.” The guy moved Jay’s pen aside, picked up the paper, and scrutinized it. “Fifties slang?”

“Oh, right.”

The more they looked, the more they found.

“You obviously aren’t from here,” the guy said. “Your accent isn’t local. I’d peg you as being from New York.”

“That’s right.” Jay went on to explain about his job and how he was shadowing Elise and David. “I thought it would be a fun gig, but they don’t like me very much.” He couldn’t believe he’d confessed something so personal. He picked up his glass, realized it was empty, and put it back down. “But it’s not a journalist’s job to be liked.”

“What
is
a journalist’s job?”

Without pause, Jay said, “To tell the truth.”

“Whose truth? Yours?”

“What do you mean?”

“My truth might not be the same as your truth. Aren’t you really telling your own truth when all is said and done?”

“I suppose so. If you want to get all existential about it.”

“Didn’t mean to bum you out.”

“No, that’s okay.”

Was he hitting on him? Guys so good-looking and charming didn’t ordinarily hit on him. Jay was attracted to both males and females, but he tended to prefer males. Maybe that was just a cop-out on his part, but he found both sexes intriguing in different ways.

“Name’s Chuck,” the guy said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Yep. Hitting on him.

“I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

It turned out Chuck was in town for a convention. And yep, a salesman. Salesmen were like sailors, seeking comfort and companionship in any port. Jay didn’t blame them. Everybody needed comfort. Everybody wanted to be held.

They talked for hours, so lost in conversation that neither noticed the time.

“Locking the front doors in five minutes,” the bartender said.

Jay checked his watch. Almost 3:00 a.m. It seemed like he’d been there only a couple of hours, but when he did the math, he realized it had been more like five.

Once outside, he looked at the guy in the khaki slacks and white shirt. Before he knew it, Jay was asking him if he wanted to come by his motel for another drink. Was there any alcohol in the room? No. He corrected his invitation. “Or coffee.”

The place where he was staying had one of those plastic coffeemakers with packaged grounds. Up until now he’d thought there was no way he’d rip one of them open.

The guy smiled. White teeth that practically glowed in the dark. “Sure.”

They drove separately, with Jay’s new friend following him to a more-than-scummy motel that rented by the hour or the week, located in a questionable neighborhood. They parked on the street and walked through the lobby together.

Would Chuck stay the night? The whole night? In the morning, would they order room service and work the crossword puzzle together? That would truly be a culmination of a perfect night, the working of a crossword. And maybe that was also the appeal of puzzles. They were things people did alone, but a crossword was also something you could share with someone. It was almost intimate.

Inside the room, Jay turned off the bright ceiling light so a single lamp illuminated the space. Like someone on a first date, he fumbled with the coffeemaker, searching for a filter, looking at the cups to see if they were clean, all the while aware of his new friend standing behind him.

His hand shook slightly as he removed the carafe. Turning, he passed Chuck, afraid to so much as glance at him, at the same time enjoying the scent of his cologne, which didn’t completely mask male skin and alcohol.

“I’m not sure how this thing works.” Jay poured the water into the plastic reservoir, placed the carafe on the warming plate, and hit a small button. A few seconds later the coffeepot made a sound, and a burst of steam and a trickle of water dribbled into the filter where he’d forgotten to put the coffee.

He touched his fingers to his lips, wondering if he should admit his mistake, when a pair of arms wrapped around him and his new friend pressed his body against him. Chuck’s erection jabbed into the curve of Jay’s ass, making it obvious that neither of them cared about coffee.

“Did you know that a young woman was murdered leaving the Chameleon just a few nights ago?” Jay asked, reaching behind him to dig his fingers into his new friend’s slacks.

“I do,” Chuck whispered, his breath hot against Jay’s cheek. He spun Jay around and threw him down on the bed.

CHAPTER 21

T
o say it was weird having Jackson Sweet around would have been an understatement.

After his first night in the guest room and first full day at Elise’s house, Sweet sat on her blue couch with the ornate wood trim, his cheap hospital slippers protruding from underneath the blanket Strata Luna had spread over his lap earlier when she stopped by to bring him a key lime pie and a mojo that was supposed to return him to excellent health. The mojo was now stinking up the room with something that smelled like mint and urine.

At this point, per Sweet’s wishes, Strata Luna didn’t know about the cancer, but Elise could tell the Gullah woman suspected Sweet’s collapse was due to more than just exhaustion and dehydration. And why wouldn’t she? He looked like hell. He was pale, and his arms below the sleeves of the white T-shirt were thin. An old man.

He’d spent the day going over the case files once more while Elise worked the street with David. Home now—for how long she didn’t know—Elise took a seat in an overstuffed chair, tucking her bare feet under her while at the same time reluctant to get too comfortable in Sweet’s presence. It might make him feel welcome.

“You haven’t brought many people in for questioning,” he said, closing a manila folder and tossing it aside.

Was he criticizing her? Or just making an observation? “People are afraid to come forward,” she said. “If anybody saw anything or heard anything, they’re unwilling to share it.”

“I can make them talk.”

At the moment, he didn’t look like he could make a nun raise an eyebrow. And it was no surprise that he’d zeroed in on their lack of witnesses, since Hoffman wanted him involved in the interrogation process. Elise was hoping his poor health might be enough to keep him away from performing that duty.

“We’re offering a reward for information leading to the capture,” she told him.

“That’ll just get you more false leads you’ll have to wade through.”

The reward had been the mayor’s idea. Ten thousand dollars. People would be crawling out of the woodwork for a chance at that.

Elise checked the clock on the wall. Audrey, who was thrilled about their houseguest, would be home from school soon. Elise had some interrogating of her own to do before that. “What were you doing at the Portia Murphy crime scene?”

Late-afternoon light poured in the long front windows of Elise’s Victorian home. Even in poor health Sweet’s eyes radiated a multitude of strange colors as he watched her. “Am I a suspect?” he asked.

“Shortly after you got to town the murders started. You were at the second crime scene—typical behavior for serial killers. And now you’ve insinuated yourself into the investigation. And you’ve admitted to killing people. What do you think?”

He held up a sheet of paper. Lamont’s handout. “I don’t fit the FBI profile.”

“Profiles aren’t foolproof.”

“So why am I here if I’m a suspect? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”

“That’s right.”

“You aren’t thinking very clearly, baby girl. I’m a weak man. The person who did this—” He riffled through another folder and pulled out a color eight-by-ten of Portia Murphy. “Whoever did this was strong.”

“You might have had help.”

“Don’t let your dislike of me send you down a wrong path.”

“The word ‘dislike’ . . .” She paused.

“Too harsh?” he said hopefully.

“Too mild.”

He laughed a real laugh. She’d never heard him laugh for real. In fact, she’d hardly seen him smile. “So why are you doing this?” she asked.

And then she had another thought: “Is this about the cancer? Do you think that helping to catch the killer will keep you from going to hell, if you believe in such things?”

“I don’t. Believe, that is.”

A rap at the front door saved Sweet from further interrogation. It was David. Instead of inviting him in, Elise joined him on the porch, closing the door behind her, out of earshot of Sweet.

“What am I going to do with him?” she asked, unable to keep the panic from her voice.

“He can come to my place, but you know how small it is.” David leaned against the wooden railing, hands braced on either side of him. He looked tired. “He can have my bed, and I’ll take the couch.”

David needed decent sleep when he could catch it, not a few hours on a short, uncomfortable couch. “That’s no solution.”

He seemed relieved. “What about Strata Luna? Since they’re old chums.”

“I thought that too, but he doesn’t want her to know about the cancer. And I’m not sure it would be a good idea, anyway.”

Elise had come to realize Strata Luna wasn’t as tough as she led people to believe. And like Sweet, much of her was about creating a persona built on folklore and legend. “I suspect she was in love with him years ago, and I don’t think she ever got over him. No need to reopen that wound.”

“Yeah, well . . .” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked off in the direction of the street. “Love is weird.”

She decided to share what was front and center. “I swear to God he’s just doing this to get to me.”

“The cancer?” David smiled a little. “That would be devious of him.”

“You know what I mean. It’s left me with no choice.”

“We always have choices.”

“Right. I could just put him out on the street, or back in that awful place where he was yesterday.”

“You could.”

She frowned at him. “But I won’t.”

“You won’t.”

“Damn.”

“What’s that look?” he asked.

She was thinking about how it was too late to have any kind of undamaged relationship with her father. “Do we always want what we can’t have?”

“Always.”

The turn in conversation made her think of Vic Lamont’s profile. “Lamont thinks the killer is someone people made fun of, someone who would never in a million years attract the attention of the women he’s killing. But you don’t think that, do you?”

“No, I don’t. And Lamont’s profile is all about pattern. I disagree.”

“Have you ever known a serial killer to break pattern?”

“It happens. The Zodiac Killer.”

“My theory is that the kills that broke pattern weren’t those of the Zodiac Killer,” Elise said. “They were simply attributed to him.”

“I’ve had that theory too. It’s a sound one.”

“So where’s this coming from? The idea that the girls aren’t a pattern?”

“The mayor’s daughter doesn’t fit.”

“Of course she does.”

“She doesn’t, and that’s what worries me. This was not some random girl, a crime of opportunity. You suspect otherwise, but I still think he knew who she was.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We can’t afford to assume otherwise.”

“Was he escalating?”

David rolled his eyes.

“What?”

“Let’s just leave all that profiler BS out of this. It’s deceptive. And in this case, I think completely irrelevant.”

“You’re letting your feelings for Lamont cloud your judgment.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. Everything he’s saying—you’re saying the opposite.”

“That’s because he’s wrong,” David said.

“You haven’t done any real profiling in years. You used to be one of the best, or so I’ve heard, but—”

“Or so you’ve heard?”

“You’re the one who keeps telling me that.”

“And I’m lying?”

“No, I’m just saying you might be rusty, at best.”

“Okay, I’m done.” David raised his hands in frustration. “I’m gonna go inside and say hi to your dad. Then I’m out of here.”

“Don’t call him my dad.”

“Okay, I’m gonna go inside and say hi to the voodoo man in your living room.”

CHAPTER 22

A
few days after stopping by Elise’s to visit Jackson Sweet, David jogged down Oglethorpe. As he jogged, he imagined a calendar hanging on the wall, a very specific date circled with a heavy red Sharpie.

It always started as an unnamed dread—until it hit him that this was
the
month. After that, he became acutely aware of the ticking clock as the darkness and sleepless nights increased until the worst day of the year arrived.

The day his son died.

No amount of therapy, no amount of running or drinking or drugs or sex could dull the pain. You had to meet it head-on. You had to embrace it. Accept it. Wear it.

Nothing wrong with sorrow.

But he wasn’t there yet. Not this year. He hadn’t fully embraced the pain, and right now he was teetering on the edge of going full-blown batshit, the rhythmic slap of his feet against the sidewalk not a sedative but an irritant.

Pack it in.

He cut through Forsyth Park, past the fountain, the shadows of live oaks undulating on the ground in front of him. Back in his apartment, he showered, refreshed Isobel’s food, jumped in his car, and headed for work. As he walked to the building, his message alert went off. He silenced it and checked the screen. Text from his mother.

Thinking of you today. I’ll call you later.

He appreciated the text and appreciated knowing he wasn’t alone in his hurting, but he didn’t want to talk to her. Her anniversary-of-death calls made things worse. He knew she’d start out very cool and in control, but then she’d break down. They’d both break down. They always broke down.