The Last Kiss Goodbye (20 page)

For people who she knew were operating on only a few hours’ sleep, everybody looked good, Charlie thought. Bright-eyed and ready to go. The men clean-shaven. Kaminsky in one of her snug skirt suits—this one had pinstripes—and, God help her, her usual towering heels. Knowing that they would be going after the Gingerbread Man full bore, Charlie, too, had put on a work appropriate outfit, consisting of black flats, slim black pants, and a sleeveless peach silk blouse. She had twisted her hair up in a loose knot in deference to the heat, and when they left would take her black blazer with her, to be carried until she needed to put it on.

She wore jewelry, too—small, tasteful silver hoops in her ears, and Michael’s big silver watch pushed halfway up her arm.

Leaving it behind on her nightstand just hadn’t felt right. If what he had told her was the truth, it was too important as evidence—and clearly too important to him personally as well. Now, as Michael’s eyes touched on the watch then rose to meet hers, she returned his gaze a tad defensively
: don’t read anything into it.

He smiled at her. She refused to even allow herself to speculate on the meaning behind that smile. But a shiver passed through her at the sheer seductive charm of it, and she realized with a thrill of alarm that she was in even bigger trouble where he was concerned than she had thought.

Do not fall in love with him.

She was horribly afraid that was like warning herself not to breathe.

“Coffee?” Crane asked her, and she nodded. Glancing at the clock over the microwave, Charlie saw that it was a couple of minutes after nine a.m. It was Saturday, which was a good thing because it meant that she didn’t have to worry about going in to work, and already so bright with sunshine that simply looking out the window made Charlie want to wince.

It was hard to reconcile a world that looked like it belonged in a happy Disney movie with the terrible things that she had seen last night.

Michael said, “You’ve got chickens in your backyard. And a big ole orange tabby looking like he’s thinking about having McNuggets for breakfast.”

“Oh, no.” Charlie was already charging out the back door into what felt like a wall of steamy heat before it occurred to her that she had spoken aloud. Well, she would just have to hope that everyone thought she had seen the impending carnage through the window for herself. Mrs. Norman, the elderly widow who lived next door on one side, raised prize-winning Leghorn chickens of which she was fiercely proud; the Powells, a high school teacher, his K-Mart assistant manager wife, and their twelve-year-old daughter, Glory, who lived on Charlie’s other side, adored Pumpkin, their cat. Unfortunately the cat and the chickens were the animal world equivalents of the Hatfields and the McCoys. Both warring parties frequently breached Charlie’s fence, the chickens because of a partiality for her sunflowers and the cat because of a partiality for the chickens. Her backyard had become the battleground on which the two species waged their deadliest battles. So far, the toll was one badly mauled chicken and a frequently pecked bloody cat.

“Shoo!” Making the appropriate shooing motions with her hands, Charlie stomped toward the chickens. The big white birds were actually surprisingly aggressive, particularly toward Pumpkin, so the sides were not as unevenly matched as she had, upon moving into the house and discovering the ongoing war, at first supposed. At that moment the chickens were scratching around in the grass beneath the sunflowers, oblivious to Pumpkin, who crouched, tail twitching and eyes fixed on his putative prey, behind a nearby rock. “Go home, Pumpkin!”

Squawking, the chickens scattered at her approach, making for the fence and then launching themselves over it into their own yard with all the grace of boulders trying to fly.

Charlie turned back to see Pumpkin, his fun ruined, sitting up and eyeing her with an unblinking golden gaze. As if to allay her suspicions about his intentions, he lifted a paw and proceeded to wash his face.

“Yeah, right. I know what you were up to,” Charlie told him. Scooping him into her arms, she turned to restore him to his own yard and found herself looking at the mountain behind her. Unnerving as it was to think about, last night a killer who had committed unspeakable crimes had been on that mountainside, peering into her windows through the foliage. The thickly wooded slope stretched upwards against the background of cerulean sky until it was lost in a froth of low-hanging, misty white clouds. Despite the bright sunshine, the variegated green of the treetops struck her as dark and forbidding, and the entrance to the path where she always began her run to the ridge seemed filled with sinister shadows. Tamping down on a shudder, Charlie reflected that it would be a long time before she ran that particular path again. Always before, she had thought of the mountain as a place of renewal, of peace and tranquility.

Now just looking at it made her feel as if a clammy hand had gripped the back of her neck.

“Charlie?” At the sound of her name, uttered on a note of uncertainty, Charlie turned to see Melissa Powell waving at her from her own backyard on the other side of the fence. Since Charlie had only lived there for a few months, she was still getting to know her neighbors, most of whom had lived in the area all of their lives. They were a close-knit group who were friendly and welcoming but a little slow to fully accept a stranger. Having never had a settled existence, much less a hometown full of family and friends and neighbors, Charlie found their easy connection to one another enviable. It was something, she had decided when she had moved in, she would like to try to be a part of. A year or so previously, it had occurred to her that she didn’t really know how to have friends. After her unstable childhood, and especially after the trauma of what had happened to Holly, she simply hadn’t wanted or perhaps she’d been unable to form many lasting bonds. Cautiously, like a swimmer putting a toe into a pool she feared might be icy, she was working to remedy that now. Here in Big Stone Gap, she was trying small town life on for size. That kind of happy normalcy was something she badly wanted for herself, even though she wasn’t quite sure if it was going to fit.

“Hi, Melissa.” Pumpkin was wriggling in Charlie’s arms now that he saw his owner, and Charlie carried him to the fence and handed him over. Probably no older than Charlie’s own age, attractive rather than pretty, Melissa had short brown hair and a thin, boyish figure. Having apparently seen Charlie with Pumpkin from her kitchen, she had stepped outside in a knee-length, zip-up pink robe. Except for the length of her hair, which reached halfway down her back, Glory, who was standing on the back porch watching Charlie, too, looked exactly like her mother, while Brett, the husband and father, whom she could just glimpse inside the open back door, was a big guy, with a bluff laugh and a beer belly. Charlie smiled a little apologetically at Melissa. “He was after Mrs. Norman’s chickens.”

“Oh, dear.” Melissa looked dismayed. Glancing down at the cat in her arms, she said, “No, Pumpkin. Bad kitty.” Shaking her head at Charlie, she added, “We’re trying to keep him in, but—” She shrugged, then gave Charlie an almost shamefaced look. “I heard—everybody’s saying—I wouldn’t pry, but with Glory, you know, I have to be so careful—did a
serial
killer
murder two girls up on the mountain last night, and did a third one escape by running to your house?”

So Melissa hadn’t been one of the neighbors who had flocked to her house in the aftermath—but still she knew what had happened. Well, of course she did. That was part of the reality of small town life. It was part—Charlie thought—of what she wanted for her own life.

Charlie gave her neighbor the bare bones of the story in a few quick sentences. Eyes rounding in horror, Melissa listened, exclaimed, “Oh, my goodness, I’m never letting Glory out of my sight again,” and “The police department needs to release a city-wide alert!”

“Did you hear or see anything unusual out here last night? Say, between 11:30 and midnight?” Charlie asked.

Melissa shook her head. “We were in bed by eleven. All of us.” She made a little face. “Everybody says there were police cars and ambulances and all kinds of commotion going on, but we didn’t hear that, either. We didn’t know a thing in the world was wrong until Sally Bennett called me this morning.”

“If you can think of anything, will you call and let me know?”

Melissa nodded. Then, with a quick “’Bye” and Pumpkin still clasped in her arms, she rounded up Glory and hurried inside her house, where Charlie had little doubt that she would soon be burning up the phone and Internet.

Suddenly conscious of the humidity wrapping around her like a blanket, sure she was already rosy with the heat, Charlie turned toward the house, to discover Michael standing not ten feet away.

His eyes twinkled at her. “Anybody ever tell you you look cute chasing chickens?”

Her eyes swept him. “It’s nice to see you with all your clothes on.”

He grinned. “The shirt dried. That silky nightgown you were wearing last night? Real pretty.”

She was not about to ask
How do you know?
But her face must have said it for her, because after a single comprehensive look at it his grin widened and he continued, “You kicked all the covers off. About the same time you started letting out panicky little cries like something was after you.”

Remembering how comforting she had found his presence in the middle of the night, she scowled at him. “What did you do, spend the entire night hovering over me?”

“Nah, I spent most of it in Sugar Buns’ bedroom. I just checked on you occasionally.”

Now, that would have been infuriating if she had believed it. The thing was, she didn’t. He might (or might not) be a charismatic psychopath/serial killer, but she’d already figured out that he wasn’t a creep. Flicking him a look that said
Aren’t you funny,
she walked on past him through the door into the blessedly cool air-conditioning. She was impatiently waiting on Michael to follow her so that she could close the door on the heat that billowed in behind her—she hadn’t yet quite totally internalized the fact that he could walk right through a closed door anytime he wanted to—when Kaminsky, half turning on the bar stool to look at her, said, “So what did your gossipy neighbor have to say?”

“She wanted to know what had happened,” Charlie replied, closing the door after Michael did, indeed, walk through it—and while she was still holding it open, too. “She’d heard things, and she wanted to check.”

“We need to canvas the neighbors, see if they saw or heard anything,” Tony said.

Skirting the table, Charlie headed for the breakfast bar. “I already asked Melissa. She said the entire family went to bed at eleven and they didn’t know a thing about it until this morning, when a friend called and told her.”

“I bet the whole town’s running scared,” Crane said. He looked at Charlie. “You want a cup of coffee?”

“Thanks.” Charlie slid up onto the bar stool beside Tony, who smiled at her. “The horrible thing about it is, this wouldn’t have happened here if I didn’t live here.”

“Tell me you’re not gonna start feeling guilty about it.” Michael leaned against the bar on her other side. Having his big body close enough to where she could have shifted an inch or so sideways and brushed him with her arm if she’d wanted to was vaguely unsettling. The thing was, every single bit of him from the faintest suggestion of stubble on his square jaw to the rock-hard abs inches from her elbow looked as real and solid as Tony did on her other side. It was difficult to keep her eyes off him, difficult to keep from letting his nearness kick her pulse rate up a notch. “The whole world ain’t your problem, babe.”

“It would have happened somewhere,” Tony told her. “This guy’s a killer, and whether you’re involved or he’s pulling in some other expert he feels like challenging, he’ll kill until we catch him. Simple as that.”

“The locals shouldn’t be in danger anyway. I’ve plotted out the location of the kill zones, which in this case are always the same as the disposal zones, and he never goes back to the same place,” Kaminsky said. “Right now, as far as this unsub is concerned, this town is probably the safest place on the planet.”

“Oh, yay, I’ll tell my neighbors.” Charlie’s response was wry. “I’m sure that’ll make up for everything.”

Tony’s eyes touched hers, dropped.

“Just so you know, from where I’m standing, right above that first button you’ve got done up on your blouse, I can see this really mouthwatering little bit of cleavage. What do you want to bet Dudley can see it, too?” Michael drawled.

Charlie couldn’t help it. Even as she shot him a fierce
Stop talking to me
look, she laid a protective hand across the bottom of the vee formed by the open collar of her blouse. It was all she could do to keep from doing up another button, simply to make sure that there was no cleavage to be seen. But that, she knew, would provide Michael with way too much entertainment. And would be a dead giveaway to how easily he could get under her skin, too.

“After we go over some things, I’d like you to come with me to the hospital to talk to Jenna McDaniels,” Tony said to Charlie, who (a little jerkily) nodded agreement. Very subtly (she hoped) she adjusted her position so that she was sitting straight enough that presumably neither of the men on either side of her could see down her shirt. Not that she had any evidence except Michael’s suggestion that
Tony
had been looking. “Crane, when we’re through here you and Kaminsky can get busy talking to the neighbors. Plus, we need to pull all the surveillance video from every ATM, every convenience store, every traffic cam in the area. If the police cruisers have video, pull that, too. Everything. We know this guy was here in town yesterday and last night. It’s possible that he, or his vehicle, were caught on tape.”