If Looks Could Kill (22 page)

Unaccountably, the sight of her gave Chris the creeps. If Lawson had wanted to re-create Chris's nightmares on purpose, she couldn't have done a better job of it.

"I only got a couple of days down here," Lawson informed her. "Can I come in?"

Chris heaved a sigh of capitulation and pushed open the door. Then she turned away and headed back toward what light she had. She didn't need any more nightmares than the ones that came as standard equipment, thanks.

"Who did you feel like accusing tonight?" she asked.

Behind her, Lawson stayed by the door. "I wanted to apologize for my behavior earlier."

That was a surprise enough to bring Chris back around again. Again she was plagued by that unsettled feeling. The room was too shadowy, too indistinct. It gave Lawson an otherworldly look, half formed, half felt. Chris fought the urge to find distance. Lawson was smiling, and somehow that was worse.

"I'm afraid I've been treating you like the suspect instead of the victim," the detective said. "I'm sorry."

Chris tried to shove her hands into her pants' pockets and then realized she had none. She settled for crossing her arms. "Thank you."

She knew she should say something else. Lawson was waiting for it. Something kept her quiet, though. Watching. She didn't trust sudden conversions unless there was a donkey and a bolt of lightning involved.

Lawson took to looking around the room. "Quite a place."

"I like it."

The little woman nodded, all browns and grays like a field mouse. With a nose like a ferret.

Chris fought a nervous smile. She was going to have to be a little more charitable. After all, this was the woman who was going to solve the case and let her get back to her life.

"I just have a few questions before I go back to St. Louis," Lawson said, wandering over to run a hand along the sofaback table. "If you don't mind."

Chris followed and resettled the upturned edge on the lace runner. "I guess not."

Lawson nodded, heading for the dining room table, part of an old oak set that Chris had found up in Soulard in St. Louis. Lawson really seemed to like the blue-and-pink glazed sugar and creamer set. She balanced them in her hands, rearranged them. Patted them.

"You don't have any idea who it is committing these murders?" she asked, moving on to the bookcases at the corner.

Chris straightened up her table. "No. I already told you that."

"How about theories?"

Lawson was at the pictures now, framed shots of the Ozarks Chris had taken over the last five years. People, buildings, landscapes cluttered with no more than cattle and fencing. Soothing, nurturing reminders of the recognizable passing of seasons. Reassurance, certainty.

"I don't have any theories," Chris answered, her gaze on her things as the sergeant fondled them.

Lawson looked back at her, eyes shadowed, the yellow flicker of a hundred candles licking her face. "Don't you?" she asked. "They're your books."

"No," Chris said definitely. "I don't."

For just a moment, Lawson held her gaze. Threw out a silent challenge silence Chris could have heard in her sleep. Then the detective nodded and walked on, over to the teapots.

"It just seems that the person committing these murders is pretty intent on copying them exactly. I mean—" she turned, a pot in her hand, "exactly."

Chris resettled her photos and brushed a bit of dust from the mahogany sideboard before following.

"Why do you think that is?" Lawson asked.

Chris was quick growing tired of the game. She did her own challenging. "I think you probably have a theory of your own that you're just dying to tell me, Sergeant. Why don't you get it off your chest so I can have my things back?"

It wasn't going to happen yet, though. Lawson's attention was caught again. Setting down the Wedgewood teapot, she headed for the wall to the right of the stove.

"I recognize this," she said, reaching up.

Chris caught the direction of her intentions just seconds too late. Before Chris could intercept her, Lawson was standing at her wall, hands up to a rather garishly painted little ceramic bust in its special niche.

"It's the Edgar Award," the woman said, reaching up to pluck the hapless little man from his shelf. "I didn't know you got one."

"Last year," Chris answered, arriving on the scene. This time she didn't bother with tact. She plucked her statuette back before Lawson could protest. When Lawson looked up, surprised, Chris did her best to smile past the irritation. "He doesn't leave his shelf."

"Protective?"

"Superstitious." Gently she set the award back in its place and faced the sergeant. The sergeant was on her way again.

"I talked to the Reverend Sweetwater this evening," she was saying as she made a run back around to the cases on the other wall.

Chris sighed in frustration and followed. "Oh, Harlan and I are old friends."

Lawson turned on her, a hand-blown vase in her hands. "Harlan thinks you're evil. Are you evil, Ms. Jackson?"

That brought Chris to a sick halt. Lawson had no idea what she was asking. From Harlan, Chris could take questions like that. Here in the night with the light a tenuous, undependable thing, she couldn't quite camouflage herself in bravado.

"He thinks somebody's been killing people to prove I'm evil?"

"No. He thinks you're doing the killing because you're evil."

Chris didn't move, neither to protect her vase nor her reputation. She simply stood rooted there, fury and shame flooding her.

"I thought I was the victim," she challenged through clenched teeth, knowing now what game the detective was playing. Hating her for it.

"I'm sure you are. It's just that you yourself said how close the murders were to the books, and that intrigues me. It makes me wonder just what the murderer is trying to say." Turning, she set the vase back down, perfectly in place, and returned her attention to Chris. "And why you haven't figured it out yet."

As if in comment on the detective's musings, the lights chose that moment to flicker back on. Both of the women blinked at the sudden glare, looked upward in verification. Each returned her attention to the other.

Chris felt the ground solidify beneath her feet. She felt her strength return, as if she'd just witnessed the first solar eclipse and survived back into the sunlight.

"Give me some time," she offered. "After all, I only found out about this. Personally, though? I think it's somebody out there on the fringes of society. Somebody who thinks this will be a way to get his name on the news."

"Don't you at least feel responsible?"

That did it. Lawson was the very last person on earth with whom Chris wanted to discuss culpability and guilt.

"No more responsible than Jodie Foster should have felt for John Hinkley. Now, if there isn't anything else, Sergeant Lawson, I have some work to do."

Lawson flashed a funny smile and lifted her hands in an almost perfect imitation of Peter Falk doing Columbo. "Sure, sure. I just wanted to talk with you before I left. I'm due back tomorrow."

Chris forbore advising the detective not to let the door hit her in the ass on the way out. "Well, good luck," she said instead. "I hope you find out who's doing it."

Already turned toward the front door, Lawson stopped. "You do?" she asked.

Chris forgot again that she had no pockets to hide her hands in. Nothing to keep her from decking the officious woman.

"Amazingly enough," she retorted dryly, crossing her arms again.

Lawson nodded as if she didn't hear the sarcasm. "Well, don't worry," she assured Chris as if the exchange were entirely legitimate. "I will."

But before she left, she reserved one last telling look that told Chris exactly where she'd like to lay the blame. Chris shut the door behind her, latched it, closed the blinds, and looked around for something to break against a wall.

In the end she didn't, of course. She settled into her rocker and eased back into the mind of a murderer.

Chapter 9

"Just what are you going to do about it, Chief?"

Mac held onto his temper just about as tightly as he held onto his screen door. "Reverend Sweetwater, I'm not exactly sure what you want me to do."

Standing there out on the sagging gray porch, his silver hair a little skewed in the breeze, his face florid with excitement, the reverend took a big enough breath to recite Deuteronomy and clutched his Good Book to his ample chest. "It's quite simple," he announced loudly for the benefit of his few followers scattered out on the lawn behind him in pastel dresses and grim-looking gray suits. "These comic books are offensive. They're an outrage to every true Christian in the town. Don't you realize what they represent? Satan, Chief MacNamara. The dark master himself, reaching out to innocent children through this trash," he insisted in that booming, pulpit voice. "As evidenced by the new and irrefutable evidence that our children are dabbling with the dark side. I'm talking, of course, about the designs being painted on the Easterby barn. Now, I know I can count on you to help me uphold the Christian values of this community to prevent these deceivers from further disrupting our youth. They're truly an evil thing."

"They're Smurfs, Reverend Sweetwater. Irritating, yes. I'd even go so far as to say nauseating. I couldn't, on the other hand, say illegal. And until the Supreme Court says that ShopMart can't have them on the shelves, it's my job to leave them there. Besides, I didn't see a single Smurf on the Easterby's siding."

"What's legal and what's moral seem to be two different things, then, don't they?" the reverend lectured in his most didactic tone, sending two or three heads to nodding in chorus behind him. "Well, with the Lord's help, morality will prevail. We'll boycott! We'll picket! We'll—"

"Harlan."

Both men turned to see Chris Jackson loping up the walk, dressed today in an electric blue-, green-and purple-striped oversized T-shirt and black stretch pants. In her hand was a pile of books. She greeted the flock in passing, but they stiffened in outrage.

"I found Jesus," she announced, hopping up the steps to the porch. "He's over at the ShopMart going through the magazine section."

Mac damn near ducked. He'd never met anybody with such a knack for lobbing missiles. And she knew just how to hit her target.

"Better hurry," she warned, eyes bright and mischievous in the face of the minister's livid red countenance. "I thought I saw Him moving toward the comics."

Mac was still safe on the other side of the screen door, watching the proceedings like a tennis match when Sweetwater leveled an accusing finger at the woman. "I've been praying, Chris Jackson. Praying hard that the Lord will see his way to taking care of you, just like a viper in the grass. Do you truly believe that you can withstand the will of the Lord?" Several amens were heard to waft from the grass. "Do you think He would not hear our prayers to defend His children against your... against that..."

She didn't mind in the least helping. "Trash? Pornography? Obscenity?"

"The devil knows his own kind."

"Considering the fact that that puts me right up on your list with James Joyce and J. D. Salinger, I'm flattered. Thank you, Harlan."

"You will not heed my warning, will you, Chris Jackson?" he threatened, his fury real, his hand trembling as he pointed her out. "I tell you these murders are an indictment on you. A real and timely judgment. The Lord hears us, and you are being punished."

"Reverend," Mac interceded gently. "I'd appreciate it if when you threaten one of the townspeople, you don't do it on my front porch. I'm not in the mood to go to the station today."

Even through the screen Mac could feel the throb of the reverend's frustration, the fury he felt for the woman challenging him. Mac had to give Chris points for having the guts to stay that close. Especially since he could tell she wasn't in the least misguided about Sweetwater's affections.

"I don't mind locking horns with you, Harlan," Chris said simply. "Figuratively speaking, of course. But lay off Luella Travers."

That stiffened Sweetwater's spine in outrage. Mac could tell that the good minister didn't see the steel reflected in Chris Jackson's cool amber eyes.