Before I Wake (36 page)

He reached over and squeezed her hand. “Then set your alarm for six. I’ll be back at half past and we’ll go to the office and eat while you read files.”

“Thanks. That’s a good plan.” She staggered a bit as she got to her feet and then she looked past Bruce to Nathan. “Thank you. For all of this. The flowers are lovely.”

“You’re welcome. Rest, Rae; give yourself time to get better. You’ve got the painkillers the doctor prescribed for that headache?”

She patted her pocket and the thin vial. “They aren’t going out of my sight.”

“Good.”

She walked with them to the door.

“I’ve got myself a second key card just in case I get so worried about you I’m thinking about kicking in the door again,” Bruce mentioned.

She hugged him. “That’s appreciated. Now go away. Get a nap or something before six. You two look worse than I do and that’s saying something.”

Nathan laughed. “Or something.”

“I shaved,” Bruce protested good-naturedly.

“The shirt is a couple days ripe though,” Nathan pointed out. He lifted a hand in a silent farewell to Rae and pushed his friend toward the hallway and the elevator.

Rae watched them go, then stepped back and locked the hotel-room door and pushed the chain in place.

Jesus, now I lay me down to sleep . . . the last time about killed me. I can’t do that again. I can’t.

She pushed back the cover on the bed to tug out the pillows and pile them up. She collapsed facedown with her arm wrapped around one of them. She was scared to close her eyes, to reach for a drink without pausing, to eat without feeling like she was going to choke on the food. It was no way to live.

If I should die before I wake . . . please don’t let Bruce and Nathan be the ones to find me next time. Don’t let that be their last memories of me. Don’t do that to them again.

She was going to find the guy who had come after her. Somewhere in her memories of that Saturday was the answer to who it was doing this.

She knew the guy. That was the one thing she was absolutely certain of—this drug designer or whoever he had used to slip her the drug was someone she had met since she came to this town.

She just needed some rest before she began that work. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Tired didn’t come close to describing how exhausting just getting out of the hospital could be. She felt sleep coming and welcomed it.

* * *

Rae smiled as she entered the Chapel Detective Agency, relieved to be back on familiar territory.

Bruce set down the box he’d brought in. “Margaret said to tell you most townsfolk don’t know your full name or address yet, so they took to dropping off their get-well cards here. There’s a basket of them waiting for you in your office.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Let’s hope you still think so after you write out all those thank-you notes.” Bruce locked the front door behind them and then led the way down the hall toward her office. “Did you remember your keys?”

She shook her head. She wasn’t even sure where she had put her purse. He dug out his and unlocked her office for her. He reached in and turned on the lights.

Her move into her office stopped before she crossed the threshold. “Oh. Oh, my furniture arrived.” She turned to beam at him.

He rubbed her shoulder. “This afternoon. Nathan and I thought you would like a place to sit down. Sillman helped us with that desk—I swear it’s the heaviest piece of furniture ever made.”

“It’s all so gorgeous.” She entered the room, her smile growing. She walked around gleaming polished furniture. She ran her hand across the vast desktop and took a seat in the black leather desk chair. She swiveled, loving the feel of it. “Mahogany?”

“Yes. And every other piece too, including the floor lamp columns. You said you liked the scrollwork finishing, so I took you at your word.”

It was richly done pieces of wood, beautiful and yet subtle with the carvings tucked around to accent the flow of the wood. “I was thinking a nice table or two to complement your basic functional desk. You spent some cash.”

“I bet it outlasts your career as a private investigator,” Bruce predicted comfortably. “Besides, I had to be able to enjoy sitting in here. You’re going to be hollering for me to come down to your office for us to talk about cases.” He took a seat in the leather chair opposite her desk to make his point and gestured around the room. “We left room for you to bring in your own couch if you like. And the files are negotiable. They would look fine in the front office if you would prefer that wall to stay open.”

“I’m liking everything I see right where it is. A few more plants, a couple more table lamps, my pretty knickknacks on the shelves and photos on the wall—” She laughed. “This is really great. Thank you, Bruce. Seriously. I appreciate this more than you can know.”

“You’re welcome.”

She sat looking at him for a moment. He’d meant to touch her heart, he had, and she’d remember that in his lasting favor every time she turned on the lights in this room and sank into this seat behind her elegant spacious desk.

“So—” She opened the file drawer behind her desk to find it empty. “The only problem is no case files to work. Let’s fix that. You’ve got my box of Peggy Worth materials?”

“In my office. I’ll get them after we figure out what we are ordering in for dinner.”

“Chinese? I would love that taste right now.”

He looked relieved she was suggesting something substantial. “Let me go make a call.”

“I’ll find new file folders I can label as we sort out paper. I’m going to be officially an office person again.”

Bruce laughed as he got to his feet. “I knew this was something you were going to take to like a duck takes to water.”

She shooed him out the door to go call in their dinner order.

* * *

“Now this is what an office should look like.”

Rae looked up from the papers she was sorting out to see Nathan standing in the doorway of her office. She waved him in with a grin. “I hear you were part of this magic transformation.”

“Bruce just asked for muscles. Sillman and I took one look in the back of that truck and said, ‘You want us to do what?’”

Rae laughed. “Well, it’s very much appreciated. That sack you’re carrying wouldn’t be what I think it is, would it?”

“Dinner. Bruce said take a break and join us, he was buying. He just didn’t mention I’d be the one picking it up. You want to eat in here or set this up in the break room?”

“Here, definitely. Let’s get this office officially broken in. Food is the best office-warming gift there is.”

“You’re getting your appetite back.”

“Doing my best to take your advice and just ignore what happened. I happen to love Chinese.”

“I’ll remember that.” Nathan set down the sack on a discarded newspaper and went to get them plates and drinks.

“Hey, buddy. I think she liked the furniture.”

“Ye of little faith,” Bruce replied, laughing as he headed down the hall. “Find me something with caffeine and bring me a spoon—you know how miserable it is to eat fried rice with a fork. I’ll be with you two in a minute. A call’s come in from Chicago.”

36

“Talk to me, Rae.” Nathan gestured to the folders on her desk with his fork.

She set aside the fried-rice container she was working her way through down toward the bottom. “Wouldn’t you rather have Sillman join us for this?”

“I sent him home to get some sleep. I don’t think he’s paused since we found you at the hotel.”

“I like that about him, the fact he wants the guy that tried for me as badly as I do.”

“There’s a reason he’s my top guy on investigations. Bruce will be back whenever he can get off that phone call, but he’s heard most of this already, so just start somewhere. He can catch up when he shows up.”

“If he’s talking to his Chicago cop buddies, we may see him a century from now. I noticed he piled his plate pretty high before he went to make that call.”

“Good point.” Nathan pointed to the whiteboard she’d confiscated from the break room. “Start with the highlights about Peggy. Let’s make sure we’re not stepping past a piece of information that would make a difference in how we proceed with this case.”

Rae found a Magic Marker from the mug of pens she had added to her desk. “It’s very simple at its core.” She used the board to track the timeline of events and began marking down dates.

“Peggy was chasing a rumor that a new designer drug is coming on the market very soon, something with a unique delivery system. I can vouch for the unique delivery system. I never saw how I got hit with the drug. The initials
EE
she mentions in her notes may stand for Extra Ecstasy; that’s a guess based on a washed-out page in her notebook.

“Peggy came to town Thursday, started asking questions, and Nella died Friday night. That remains our strongest tangible link to the cook that we have found. Nella was shut up before she could talk to a reporter, and that says she knew something, either about the cook, or where he was working.

“Saturday night the reporter Peggy dies. We’ve found her orange-covered notebook, but not her BlackBerry. It may still be lost out on Prescott’s land, since we never got back there to finish that search.

“Karen dies next. She’s passing through town and seems to be truly just a test of the drug. Based on how she died, it was a more refined version of the drug than what killed Peggy.

“Saturday I found Peggy’s notebook. That same night, I somehow got taken out. The fact the notebook pages were not removed from the hotel room after I was hit—maybe it was just the fact I was out running around asking questions that was considered the threat. We know this guy is close to having his drug perfected; he just needs to keep people off his trail for maybe a couple weeks and he’s done and gone.”

Nathan nodded. “He’s stopping the people asking a lot of questions. He’s not worried about the investigations of the deaths easily leading back to him.” He grimaced. “He knows we don’t have much of a path from the scenes back to him.”

“The pattern in the cases will show up eventually,” Rae reassured. “It’s there. But figuring out who it is crossing all of our paths isn’t an obvious name.”

“It’s a good summary.” Nathan studied her notes on the board. “What else do we know? Or know that we don’t know?”

“Good distinction.” Rae thought a moment. “Three things. We don’t know where this drug is being made. We don’t know how many more tests of the drug have been done that didn’t result in a death. We don’t know if this is the same cook that was involved in the millennium rave-party deaths. Danforth’s suicide strongly suggests it might be the same guy coming back on the scene with another drug.”

Nathan added an observation of his own. “We know from Franklin’s work that it’s likely a new class of designer drugs. The tests should have picked up on variations.”

“Another indicator it might be the same guy. The cook had to lay low after the kids’ deaths; he’s been using that time to create something new,” Rae suggested.

“And while that cook may not live around here, he at least has a place to work around here that probably goes back a few years.” Nathan shook his head. “I’m not hopeful we find that lab. It could still be a spot in the woods, and probably is given the sounds and smells to be covered up, but it’s tucked someplace it’s not attracting attention.”

“A mobile home on a remote corner of a property, maybe,” Rae offered. “Someplace able to be used for a number of years in all kinds of weather. But I doubt it would be a home or an address where a postman would be delivering mail.”

“A warehouse, hog barn, hunting cabin, abandoned house. You’ll find protected places against the weather dotting this county.”

“He’s being careful to not get connected to his product. I think that extends to how he treats where he’s making it. He’ll try to stay a step away from being easily identified to the location.”

“I won’t find an electric bill for the lab in his name,” Nathan said with a rueful smile.

“Probably not.”

“Okay. So does any of this change how we’re working this? It still says our focus here is on the timeline of your Saturday night and lots of lab tests. Tracking down Danforth’s contacts to see if we can find a patron to squeeze to get a cook’s name—that’s weeks if not months of work for the guys up north.”

“He’s got to have some raw-chemical ingredients to work with and he can’t just be out buying that stuff in this town. So where is he shopping? Maybe we can work on that a bit.”

“We can try.” Nathan studied the list she had jotted down. “We’re already doing all we can.”

“I think so.”

“And we’re waiting for victim five to show up.” Nathan hated that reality but knew he was stuck at that point.

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I. The source is still here in Justice. Somewhere. We’ve just got to find the person before he moves on.”

He thought about it and sighed. He nodded. “Thanks, Rae. I needed to see this laid out one more time. I’m planning to head over and talk with Franklin this evening and see what he’s thinking now.” He got to his feet and started collecting food cartons. “Bruce took all the egg rolls with him?”

“I bet he did.”

“Then I’m taking the last of the spicy shrimp. You sure you don’t want to finish up this beef and broccoli?”

“I’ll pass.” She dug a fortune cookie out of the sack. “Has there been any word on the union contract?”

“Zachary thinks maybe he gets the final decision tomorrow. Corporate has been taking apart the profit numbers and asking a lot of questions but hasn’t been tipping their hand much one way or the other. If they decide to close the plant, they say that to Zachary and then lean across the table and say, ‘Sorry, we think you’ve done a great job, but your position is being eliminated and you’re being laid off too.’”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

Nathan shrugged. “Zachary has. If it weren’t for what that would mean for this town, I think he’d actually be relieved to be done with these people at this point. Anyway—maybe the final word one way or the other comes tomorrow.”

“Can I do anything for you? Bake you cookies? Walk your dogs? Toss snowballs at you? Just generally be a distraction?”