If Looks Could Kill (31 page)

"Men terrified of their homosexual tendencies," Chris corrected. "Trey has had a steady relationship for ten years."

"And you know him well enough to swear he doesn't have any problems with his homosexuality."

She shook her head, knowing that Trey couldn't be the killer. Knowing that nobody could.

Knowing at the same time that somebody certainly could. That somebody was.

"Homosexual serial killings all follow a pretty similar pattern," she said. "And this isn't it."

"This isn't any of it," Mac insisted. "We're talking about a crafty, intelligent wacko with a mission here, and right now you're the only one who can give us any insights into why. And you're going to have to do it tomorrow for the guy coming down from St. Louis."

"Then I'll do it tomorrow."

Chris didn't even have to turn to see how frustrated Mac was. He gave himself away without a word. They stood that way for a long time, the two of them facing the open refrigerator as it clicked on to compensate for the chill lost to Chris's indecision. Both of them rigid, each battling his own frustration.

Chris held her breath against the next assault. She fought the urge to run. Instead, she deliberately leaned forward and plucked an old peach from the shelf, as if that had been what she'd meant to do all along.

Behind her, Mac did his own reorganizing. She could sense it in the deliberate easing of tension. In the careful cadence of his breathing, as if he were bleeding off his frustration through a safety valve.

"Would you tell me one thing?" he asked, his voice deceptively gentle.

Chris closed the door and turned back to find him once again worrying at that scar, his eyes suddenly weary.

"Only if it has nothing to do with how I research my romance novels," she retorted as easily as she could with her own suspicions weighing on her.

He almost managed a smile. "Did you ever think of what might have happened eighteen months ago that was unusual?"

Chris lifted the peach in her hand in invitation. Mac shook his head. She took a bite and finally gave in to her need to move, heading back to the living room. Mac followed at his own pace.

"I made
The New York Times
best-seller list for the first time," she offered, resettling a pair of brass Art Deco candlesticks on the other end of her sofaback table and straightening an edge of lace on the runner. She noticed that the Edgar Award still sat quietly on its special niche by the dime-store Indian that had occupied her dorm in college. It seemed that everybody knew better than to touch the little statuette. Everybody but Lawson, of course. But Lawson wouldn't be bothering Mr. Poe again.

Mac stopped beside her, not poised to leave just yet.
"New York Times,
huh? Is that when the stories really started on the famous reclusive author?"

She nodded, brushing at imaginary dust on the table.

"Anything else? Anything closer to home?"

That brought her head back up. Chris had been thinking about this a lot lately. "It was almost two years ago that I first tried to have the judge arrested for abusing Shelly."

Mac's eyebrows did a quick slide north. "I bet that was popular."

She snorted. "Old L. J. Watson himself came to the house and explained the facts of life to me. I didn't make the same mistake twice."

"Anything else?"

She sighed. "Victor's engagement to Suzy Gliddel was called off. Sue lost her last baby, and Harlan and I went a couple rounds at the town council meeting on which books in the school library were obscene."

"You're not making this any easier."

"Imagine how thrilled I am. I'd really rather not have any more bodies on my conscience."

Again, briefly, that harsh frustration flashed across his features. Chris almost flinched from it. She held her place, munching on the already-sour peach and desperately wishing there were some way to avoid what was sure to happen. Knowing what she had to look forward to.

"No more books, right?" Mac asked.

"No more books."

"Do you have a copy of the one Cooter starred in?"

Chris shook her head. "I'll print one out for you."

He paused. Took a second to look up to where the office still bore the ravages of her search. "How's the security on your computer?" he asked.

Chris turned to give a considering look to the workstation at the back of the house. Right now it was camouflaged by towers of books and Spy Shop boxes. "Security?"

"Do you use code words for files? That kind of thing?"

"No. It never seemed necessary."

Mac's expression eased just a hair back into concern. "It might be now."

Chris turned again. Thought about the unsettled feeling she'd been having. The questions, the suspicions.

"As in, somebody could easily get into my house and boot up the book?"

"As in."

* * *

The first thing Chris did after closing the door on Mac was yank out the air freshener. She usually didn't use it, preferring the natural scent of potpourri. But chemicals demanded like chemicals and she still smelled that disinfectant. She sprayed the rooms as if warding off an infestation of roaches. She straightened and she dusted what had already been dusted. She shut the blinds and turned on the music, Buckwheat Zydeco this time, and tried to drown out the old voices; all the while plagued by the gnawing suspicion that someone was looking over her shoulder. Someone was whispering in her ear, trying to make her see something she was missing.

What was behind this? What was it someone was trying to tell her?

The questions were too dangerous. Too difficult. There were acres of lost memory and miles of carefully erected defenses to get through in order to reach that one.

After all, she'd spent the last seven years trying to get to the same kind of answers. And she could only approach them in careful increments, like rappelling off a high cliff, inch by inch, letting out the lifeline as she swung deeper and deeper into the darkness.

What they were asking her to do was free-fall, and she simply couldn't do it.

Maybe if she came at it from another angle, she'd get through it OK. Maybe if she just used the skills she'd learned over the years, providing alibis, evidence, clues. Maybe the material evidence would be enough. After all, the very last thing the police really gave a good goddamn about was motive anyway. All they wanted was the smoking gun.

Positive action. It had been what had gotten her this far. It would get her through the rest. Pulling over a yellow pad, Chris uncapped her favorite fountain pen and tried her damnedest to come up with an objective list of her own.

It was all falling apart. Her peace, her stability. Her sanity. She had escaped to a cloister, a safe, secure place far away from the world, and it had been breached. Her dreams hadn't just returned, they'd begun to take over.

Briefly she squeezed her eyes shut. She was so tired. So overwhelmed. It wasn't a matter of hypothesis anymore. Conjecture. It was survival. And suddenly Chris, who had survived so much, simply didn't know whether she had the strength anymore to do it all over again.

Her friends. Her family, as close as she'd ever in her life come to one. And one of them was hiding something this hideous from her in daylight and acting it out at night. Someone seething with rancor or madness. Or both. She had to know. She had to protect herself.

She had to make sure she couldn't see the murderer in anyone else for the simple reason that she should have been looking to herself.

* * *

Al MacNamara had Eric Clapton on his stereo. He had all the lights off except the floor lamp by the old leather wingback he'd rescued from the ashes of his marriage, and a scotch on the rocks on the table with a half-eaten TV dinner. Kafka lay open and unread on the footstool. Mac was on the phone, his attention completely on his caller.

"What do you mean she's not C. J. Turner?" he demanded, drink, book, and blues forgotten.

"I mean," his brother informed him from Chicago, "that she's not even Chris Jackson."

Chapter 13

Mac thought he had him. "Jacqueline Christ," he said, picking his drink back up.

"What?"

"Her name," he said. "I bet you found out she's Jacqueline Christ."

"God, she's somebody else, too? Who is this chick, Sybil?"

The drink stopped halfway to Mac's mouth. "Don't fuck with me, Danny. I've had a bad day."

"So have I," his younger brother retorted. "I spent all of Sunday dinner listening to your mother wonder why you haven't called her."

Mac pressed the cold glass against his temple. "Not now," he warned.

"If you wanted to run away from home, why didn't you just join the circus like everybody else? At least people'd know where to find you."

Mac pulled in a calming breath. It was getting very dark outside. His windows were open to the quiet town, the breeze picking at the limp gauze curtains by the front door. Mac fought the urge to yell, knowing that would only encourage Danny toward higher levels of recalcitrance.

It was what made Danny Danny. What pissed off the brass and made Danny such a good cop.

"What," Mac demanded, "is her name?"

"Your mother?" his brother countered easily. "Mary Rose. You might remember better if you talked to her once in a while."

"Danny..."

Even Danny understood the import of that tone of voice.

"Christian Evensong."

Mac was caught short by the sudden capitulation. "What?"

Danny laughed, a rasp like sandpaper on wood. "Yeah, no shit. That's a real beaut, isn't it? My parents named me that, I'd change it, too. Shit, I'd probably sue."

"So she's using an alias?"

"No. She had it changed legally... wouldn't you?"

"When?"

"Uh... seventy-seven."

Mac was leaning forward now, his drink all but forgotten, his mind on overtime. She must have been pretty young. Eighteen at the most. "Where?"

"Where what?"

"Where did she get it changed?"

"Oh. Uh, Jefferson City, Missouri. Since that time she's gotten a GED, a bachelors' in science, social service, and English lit—hey, you two could bore each other to tears, couldn't you—with a psychology minor, which means she's a liberal, candy-assed fruitcake with a good vocabulary, huh? No outstanding loans, two credit cards without big balances, no wants or warrants, record as clean as your long-distance bill. She's lily white in every way, pard."

A mystery wrapped in an enigma, Mac thought, even more intrigued than ever. Furious at her duplicity, intrigued by her secrecy. What could have been so bad that she'd locked it away behind a legal decision? Why hadn't she admitted it to him when he'd asked?

Just who the hell was Chris Jackson anyway?

"Mac?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"A thank you might be nice. Especially since I had to actually break bread with MacElheny to get her to cough up the computer time."

"You're a prince."

"That's what I keep telling you."

"Anything else?"

"Yeah. Are you please going to call Mom so I don't have to suffer through another pot roast dinner like tonight? I'm not exactly sure why, but she worries about you."

Mac wasn't paying attention enough anymore to be irritated. "She's just afraid you're going to be the only one left to carry on the MacNamara name."

"Just for that, I won't pass on your best to Loose Lips Livingston. She'll be so sorry."

They abused each other for ten minutes, finally making Mac smile and promise to call his mother the minute he got off the phone with the twins. Right after he made a few other phone calls.

"You coming home soon?" Danny asked.

"When the kids come in. I'll have a weekend, at least."

"That's not what I mean."

Mac fought to hold onto his humor. He knew how hard it had been for Danny to watch his brother walk away from the force. There was nothing Mac could do about it. Danny had never had to face the twin barrels of a sawed-off just before it exploded in his face. He'd never puked just over the thought of opening a strange door.