If Looks Could Kill (21 page)

"Yeah."

"Anything you might take to be a signature?"

"I thought the murder itself was a signature."

"Anything at all that doesn't fit?"

Lawson thought about it for a moment. "Weaver's wife swears the victim's high school ring is missing."

"Nothing else."

"That's why nobody bought the intruder angle. The only room in the house that has a plastic cover out of place is the bedroom."

"Any artifacts missing from other victims?" Mac asked, trying hard to call up the memory that bit about the ring had nudged.

"Deborah McClain's wedding ring."

"Rings, rings..." Mac mused a moment. Suddenly his head came up. "Trophies. This clown's taking trophies."

FBI in-service on serial killers. Mac remembered a stuffy classroom at the Circle Campus that smelled like old socks and creaky heating systems, a nondescript-looking suit at the front with a pointer and a cavalcade of murder shots that looked like the Hall of Fame from Hell. Serial killers tended to take something from the scene, some kind of memorabilia, be it actual or photographed, to relive the high of the crime later.

"Look for a missing ring from the actor," Mac suggested, the adrenaline tickling at him. "Look for somebody who showed up at each scene beforehand, maybe after, during the investigation. Whoever this guy is, he's comfortable enough to take his time with his work. That means he's done his homework. He might have even gotten to know his victims so well ahead of time that they let him in, which would explain the fact that there's no sign of forced entry in each situation."

"Chief?"

Mac looked up again, this time to find Sue, her expression making him think of pop quizzes and unexpected in-laws. "You're supposed to be over at the school for that meeting with the tourism committee."

Worse than in-laws. One of the nastiest tortures inflicted on police chiefs of any kind. Political glad-handing. Meaningless wastes of perfectly good evenings spent listening to the likes of Ray Sullins wax eloquent on how, if the rest of the town would just listen to him, their businesses would prosper. It occurred to Mac, not for the first time, that he should send a letter of commiseration to the big chief back in Chicago.

Lawson was already pulling her things together.

"I need to get going anyway..."

Mac battled an urge to curse. He wanted to stay at this table and work out puzzles. Instead, he was doing the grip-and-grin circuit again. Facts of life.

"Is there anything else I can get hold of for you?" he asked.

She had all the folders refilled, all that tantalizing information tucked away again. "You really want to, I'm going to let you at all those romance letters," she said with a sly grin. "I'm going to spend some more time here getting more information on Ms. Jackson. Might help figure this thing out a little when I get back." She looked up, and Mac thought he caught a glint of avarice in her eyes. "I know you haven't been here long. That old bat in the mausoleum told me. Got any idea who can give me info on your famous author?"

Mac motioned toward the other room, where the clatter of computer keys could be heard. "Sue. She and Chris are pretty tight. Be real careful around here, though. Damn near the whole town considers Chris Jackson a local treasure."

Lawson's smile wasn't pleasant. "In that case, I'll just have to talk to the Reverend Sweetwater. Maybe Judge Axminster."

Mac raised an eyebrow. "You do your homework."

"Yes," she agreed with a final swipe of the Kleenex. "I do." She flashed another smile, this one belated, as if she'd just been reminded of her manners. "Thanks, Chief. I appreciate the help."

She held out a hand.

Mac hadn't realized how tense he'd gotten. Her words eased the strain across his shoulders and the tension in his jaw. "I might be able to give you some new ideas if I kept some of the information," he said.

That brought her to another standstill. She wasn't even supposed to have those files so far away from home. Copying them would be a mortal sin in any supervisor's bible, and both of them knew it. Even so, Mac was offering more than anybody else had.

She brightened again, this time a little less measured as she retrieved her hand. "I need to run by the drugstore real quick for something. Do you mind if I"—gesturing to the open files on her desk—"leave these here?"

Mac's grin was probably carnivorous. "No problem," he assured her. "They'll be right here when you get back."

As the bell jangled over the front door, Mac leaned out from his office. "Sue, let Mayor Sullins know I'm going to be a little late."

* * *

After carefully copying every scrap of paper on that desk and handing the originals back to the departing sergeant, Mac itched to wade around in them and pull out a few universal truths. Unfortunately, after the tourism committee he was headed off by a surprise delegation from the Safe Parks Forum, a visit by the mayor to discuss the cost of Mac's new fitness regimen, and a call from John to check out some vandalism that Mary Ellen Easterby just knew was the stirrings of a satanic cult.

By the time he was safely alone in his office once more, it was almost dinnertime, there was a storm brewing that would probably take out the electricity, and a pile of romance books sat on his desk with a note from Sue to read them before talking to her the next morning.

Mac turned one over, and then another. They looked pretty much alike, all with white covers, with the word Rapture swirled across the top in gold, and a picture of two space mannequins with perfect anatomy in a clinch that would have demanded a Jaws of Life to break up and a chiropractor to treat. Not exactly his type of fiction. Not even his kind of picture.

Jacqueline Christ, he noted from the short bio inside, did indeed have several degrees, and lived in upstate New York. A good place to set a romance writer, he assumed.

Jason Kilpatrick bad no use for women.

Oh, that was a promising start. Mac fought a superior smirk and read the next line. And the next. By the time the lights went out an hour and a half later, he was halfway through the book.

* * *

Chris went through the Jacqueline Christ letters alone in her office. This pile was a much bigger one, stretching back almost eight years. Cards, letters, notes, mostly handwritten, many eloquent, all sincere. Somehow more personal than the mystery letters, much more elemental. Even more disquieting to Chris, who still felt she did a disservice to these women, who tended to look to the author of dynamic, capable women as some kind of role model. As if she were somehow an expert, simply because she had a good imagination.

Outside her greenhouse, the sky had taken on a metallic hue. The trees in Mary Willoughby's yard had begun to dance, and Chris could hear the wind tuning up. Another storm was brewing. It was the time of year for it, when two seasons tumbled over each other in sweaty, furious combat until summer finally won out sometime late in May.

Clouds folded and climbed into the western sky, and the late afternoon shuddered with distant lightning. As long as they hit during the day, Chris loved storms. She could sit by the hour up here and watch them assault the hills, titanic armies of gray that hammered at the land with breath and light and roaring fury. She pulled her chair up to the big windows so she could see how the normal, everyday world around her took on different substance within the shuddering incandescence of lightning.

It was as if she could see through substance for split seconds and discover the elemental forces that still lived within. Spirits and demons and gods only the Indians and mad Celts could see anymore. Not tamed by civilization or driven out by religion, but trapped, set free only with the whipping wind and otherworldly light civilization feared.

A letter in her hand, Chris stood up to watch as the dusk rushed in on ragged clouds. She grinned, the exultation filling her, the music better than heavy metal for purging obstinate ghosts. It was day and night, the best of times when the darkness couldn't hurt her, when the world could fly completely apart and take her along.

When she saw things that weren't there.

Her smile died. Blinking in surprise, Chris stepped closer to her windows. A shadow among the trees.

Movement. For just the briefest of moments, Chris thought she'd caught a
sidhe
, set loose by the swirling electricity, caught on the wrong side of the veil. Then she cursed and stepped right up to the edge of the balcony. She couldn't discern much, but it looked like a person standing at the edge of Mary's yard, staring up at her window.

Weird Allen. She just knew it, knew that slouching posture anywhere. It was the last thing she needed, having him watching in her back window while she worked.

Then, she wasn't so sure. Familiar, yes, but not necessarily Allen. Triggering the taste of memory again. Old, rancid memory that wouldn't gel into voices or pictures. Frustrating, frightening. Unreal as her fantasies, unsettling as her dreams.

She turned, not sure whether to try and get downstairs to chase it off, to call the police and let them know she had a prowler.

Because she suddenly wasn't sure, she took one more look out.

He was gone.

The rain descended, hard slanting sheets of it, blurring the edges of reality, cloaking the town in dim silver. Dissolving her visitor like a magician's cape, until Chris couldn't tell whether she'd imagined what she'd seen or not. She shivered, wondering whether the town had taken to keeping watch on her, or whether she should really worry about the shadow figure. Or whether she was finally simply suffering from sleep deprivation.

Again she thought to call the police. She knew, though, she had nothing to tell them. Worse, she couldn't tell them what she was afraid of. That the phantom out there on her lawn hadn't been real at all.

The storm broke over her house with all the fury of a four year old in a tantrum. Wind moaned at the windows and lightning shattered the sky into ragged pieces. But Chris couldn't watch it anymore. She couldn't do more than focus her eyes on the high, white walls of her house. Clean walls. Bright walls. Open walls that protected her rather than caged her in. Her heart was finally beginning to slow, the bright wash of space easing the instinctive terror of the unknown. Five minutes later, the lights went out.

* * *

Lawson came visiting in the dark.

Chris had lit as many candles as she could without setting off the smoke alarms, and was safely ensconced in her rocking chair trying her best to work at a laptop. It wasn't an easy thing to do, considering the fact that Chris had to spend most of her time making sure that the shadows that writhed and stretched along her walls weren't alive. That the storm that had blown out daylight hadn't also blown in something she didn't want.

It made her furious. She'd been so happy. Not perfect, God knows, but content. Productive, protected, actually close enough to normality to taste it like the first hint of spring on the air.

She'd been sleeping almost dream free, channeling all that old confusion and ambivalence into something positive. She'd been able to do something she hadn't in all the years she'd fought so hard to go one on one with the world. She'd made a difference.

And now it was threatening to unravel right around her. Now, some jerk with a vivid imagination and a need to connect was tormenting her in ways he couldn't even imagine.

After all, who could know? Who could realize just what fueled the works of both C. J. Turner and Jacqueline Christ.

Even as the candles flickered and the light undulated around her, Chris bent over the coffee table to create the dreams of a new murderer.

* * *

He didn't believe the blood was real. There was too much of it, washing over the room like a warm, blackened wave. He didn't want to look at the blood. He couldn't help it. It was only right after all. She should have to pay for betraying him. For offering him up to the highest bidder, when all he wanted was peace...

The knock was sharp and sudden. It so startled Chris she damn near tumbled right off the rocker.

Maybe if she ignored it, it would stop. Maybe it wasn't any more real than the phantom in her window.

Maybe it wasn't real, but it repeated itself. Louder this time and more insistent.

Chris didn't even want to get to her feet. Damn, she hated this. "Yes?"

"It's Sergeant Lawson."

Her shoulders slumped. "Shit." She hated that even more. Maybe she could sneak out the back. Maybe she could get hold of Victor and Lester to do a show for the good sergeant. For the first time since she'd moved in, Chris regretted the fact that she didn't have a phone. She'd be on the phone right now to MacNamara demanding he get this pit bull off her neck.

"It's still raining out here, Ms. Jackson," the sergeant let her—and undoubtedly everyone on the block—know.

Chris didn't have the energy to remind the good woman that she was standing beneath a porch overhang. She shut down the computer screen and climbed to her feet.

"Don't you have regular hours?" Chris demanded when she caught sight of the detective on the other side of the screen door.

It was hard to see out there. This entire end of town was without electricity, the only light the pale reflection in the clouds. Standing out there beyond the flickering reach of candlelight, Lawson was a shadow.