Listen to the Shadows (18 page)

“You’re a perceptive woman,” he said. “If you sensed a person in those woods, I’d be willing to bet on it.”

“Thanks,” she said, not certain if that made her feel any better. If she hadn’t been such a coward, if she’d just stopped to turn around, even for an instant, she might have seen the face of her tormentor—of Jason’s killer. She could have told the police, and it would be all over by now. It would be all over because you would be dead. You know very well you didn’t really outrun him. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs while you were scrambling around for your key. He was watching you. Smiling. Look hard, Katie. See him. See his face. “Did the police talk to Charlie Black?” she asked, snapping herself out of the almost hypnotic state.

Jonathan gave a wry grin. “Poor old fellow was scared half to death. I don’t think we need include him in our list of possible suspects.” He looked at his watch. “Your friend’s a little late, isn’t he. It’s five to eleven.”

Katie rose to refill their coffee cups. Please don ’ t go, Jonathan. I don ’ t want to be alone. “His father’s been ill,” she said. “I expect he’ll be detained. He’ll be here, though. Drake is reliable.” She thought about the police car cruising the area and told herself she had nothing to fear.

“Live far from here, does he?”

“Who?”

“Devlin. He live far from here?”

“On a farm with his father.”

“Oh? Where?”

Katie let out a nervous laugh. “Why? Does it matter?”

He shrugged and sipped his coffee. “No, I suppose not. I just thought you told me he was a lawyer.”

“Yes. Well, he’s had to put aside his plans to open a practice to help his father on the farm.”

“I see. Commendable.” He checked his watch again.” He stood up.

“Well, I suppose I should be leaving…”

“Oh, I’d almost forgotten,” Katie said, standing to face him. “Jason’s car was parked around front when I got home last night.”

“Yes, I remember. Is that important?”

“Jason never parked at the front. Always around back.”

Jonathan shrugged into his coat, his face thoughtful. “He must have come upon the intruder as he was leaving your house. Stopped the car and got out.”

“Yes,” she answered sadly. “That’s what I concluded. And that’s why he’s dead.”

“The police found truck tire tracks on the property—right down to the lake. But you say you didn’t hear or see a truck—only someone in the woods.”

“There are a lot of little side roads leading into the woods. Old logging roads. It wouldn’t be too hard to hide a truck.”

He was standing at the door now, hands jammed into his pockets, and from the way he was looking at her, she got the impression he didn’t want to leave any more than she wanted him to. But maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part.

“That strawman—that was planned,” Jonathan said. “He had to have broken into Jason’s apartment to get those clothes.”

Katie nodded. They’d already covered that. “Are the police really convinced the man they’re looking for is someone I’m acquainted with?” she asked, knowing even as she did, the question was merely a stall to keep Jonathan with her a little longer. Would she never learn?

“They’re not convinced of anything at this point, but you have to go with the premise, otherwise we really are faced with looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.” Again, he checked the time. “Are you sure Drake is coming?”

She was on the slippery edge of ending the charade, of telling him she never had been expecting Drake, when the phone rang. She walked calmly over to answer it. Maybe it was Drake now. She wasn’t sure if she wanted it to be. Or maybe it was him calling to further torment her.

Then she would simply hand the phone over to Jonathan.

But it was neither. A woman’s voice, soft and cultured, asked to speak with Jon Shea. “Tell him it’s Lona, will you, dear?”

Katie handed him the phone. “For you. Lona. This case must be playing hell with your social life.” As he spoke into the receiver, Katie headed for the kitchen, fighting hot pangs of jealousy. She could imagine the owner of that voice—gorgeous, sexy, smiling up at Jonathan, lips moist and parted, eyes inviting. She saw Jonathan’s hand reach for the zipper at the back of the expensive dress, a Dior, saw the dress fall from alabaster shoulders to puddle at her feet, revealing a perfect body. Jonathan’s eyes glazed with passion…

“Sorry about that,” he said, coming into the kitchen where Katie at once busied herself polishing the kettle on the stove with a dish cloth. She saw her face in the chrome. It looked pale and distorted. “I don’t know how she got your number. Probably from the police department. Lona can be very persuasive.”

“I’m sure,” she said coolly. God, she was being so obvious. She didn’t want to be obvious. She couldn’t seem to help herself.

He was looking at her oddly, then, to her shame, she saw the hint of a grin touch his mouth. Her own face flamed as she fought the urge to slap it off. He was as arrogant as ever. There was nothing, she supposed with a twist of malice, like a pursuing Lona to inflate a man’s sagging ego.

“Well, I’d best be leaving before your company arrives,” he said.

But he made no move to go, instead stood looking at her, indecision coming into his blue eyes. “Don’t hesitate to call, Katherine,” he said solemnly, all trace of the grin gone now. “Not for any reason.”

“I won’t.” She turned abruptly from him, moving to the sink where she began rinsing the few dishes there. He came up behind her and reached past her to turn off the faucet. Then he placed both hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “I mean it, Katherine. Not for any reason.”

“Yes. I heard you.”

Seeming satisfied with that, he released her. “Lock the doors when I leave. I’ll be in touch.”

She thought about telling him of the ominous phone call she received today, then changed her mind. He would probably see it as a ploy to keep him here.

As Jonathan was getting into his car, Katie saw the police cruiser drive slowly by, dome light flashing silently as a beacon, bringing her a small measure of security.

In the studio, she recapped her tubes of paint and set her brushes to soak, wondering as she did if Lona was the society woman Linda Ring had told her about—the woman Jonathan had almost married. And why was he taking a year’s sabbatical? Surely, it had to be more than the death of a single patient, as tragic as that was. Weren’t doctors conditioned to expect that not all of their cases would end successfully? Especially psychiatrists. Jonathan did not seem so fragile as to be bowed by one failure. But perhaps there wasn’t just one.

Well, he was no concern of hers, she told herself, as she set about making up her bed on the cot. And he certainly owed her no explanations. Let Lona help him work through whatever was haunting him. And hadn’t she, Katie, already mapped out her own life? A life free of personal commitment? No husband. No children. She would travel light. A no-risk life. What a joke that was. There was no guarantee of safety, no matter how carefully you planned your life.

She was proof enough of that.

As Katie mechanically changed the pillow case on the pillow, she thought of those people who had once been an integral part of her life—her father, Todd, Aunt Katherine, even her mother…they moved across the screen of her mind like a parade of ghosts from a past lifetime. Now Jason would join them. She pushed the thought away.

The postcard from her mother was on the desk. She hadn’t read it yet. Mainly because she knew in essence what it would say. “George bought a bigger cruiser…met some people who really know how to party…how’s the painting going? You must come for a visit soon.”

They both knew, of course, that Katie would never take her up on her invitation, which was born out of a sense of duty, and to her mother’s credit, perhaps even guilt.

From the time Katie was eleven, she’d known it was because she bore such a strong physical resemblance to her father—tall, green-eyed, even to the same gold highlights in otherwise brown hair. Her father might be gray by now, or maybe even bald, if he was alive at all. “You’re just like you’re goddamn father,” her mother would shriek whenever Katie did anything to displease her.

Stan Summers, a salesman for a pharmaceutical company, had betrayed her mother by running off with the office secretary—What a cliché, Daddy!—never to be heard from again, and Katie’s presence was a constant, bitter reminder of that fact.

Laying a piece of wood on the fire, Katie directed her thoughts to a more pleasant subject. A cat. A gray momma cat. She could get one now that she was home to take care of it. Probably though, she thought, it would make more sense to get a dog. She would feel safer with a dog. She would get both, she decided with the smallest uplifting of her spirits. A cat and a dog.

She opened the drapes a little and looked out on the darkness. No wind now. No raging water. Just calm. A terrible, waiting calm. She let the drapes fall back into place and came away from the window.

The house, too, was silent.

What if someone tried to break in here right now? What would she do? How would she protect herself? She vaguely remembered the handgun her Aunt Katherine always kept upstairs in her room in her dresser drawer. No doubt it would be considered an antique by now.

Did the gun even work? And if it did, were there any bullets? She was being ridiculous, of course. Even if the gun was functional and she did manage to find the bullets, she didn’t know the first thing about guns. The intruder would probably take it from her and shoot her with it. Providing she didn’t shoot herself first.

Bone tired, Katie switched on the radio for a time check. It was ten minutes to midnight. After resetting both her watch and the mantle clock, she picked up the postcard on her desk and saw with surprise that the picture on the fact of it was of her mother lounging on a lawn chair under a palm tree. She held a tall drink with one of those striped straws angling out of it, smiling happily at whoever held the camera.

George, most likely. With her champagne-blond hair and the new face-lift, she looked at least as young as her daughter. Katie smiled. Despite her own deep hurt, she was glad that her mother was finally happy. Setting the postcard down on the desk, she went to turn down the covers. But before getting under them, she grimly removed the stove poker from its usual place against the wall and placed it on the floor within her reach.

Katie got into bed and closed her eyes. But despite her need for sleep, it did not come. Tomorrow, she thought, she would definitely drive out to the pound and inquire about a dog and a cat that could tolerate one another.

She turned on her side, tugged at the blankets, tried to fall asleep. But the harder she tried, the more awake she became. The house, too, wakened. She lay listening to the creaks and groans caused, she knew, from boards and nails complaining under the stress of too many seasons—of simply the house settling—harmless sounds that up until now had all but escaped her notice. But now they fed her fears, provoked her worse imaginings, making her uncomfortably aware of how alone she really was, and how vulnerable.

***

Not until the sun was coming up behind the hill did Katie finally fall asleep, but it was a sleep plagued with dreams of herself running down endless corridors, the sound of breathing all around her. Like giant waves it came, rising and falling like the sea, flooding her mind and heart—drowning her. Soon the breathing became laughter—insane laughter echoing off walls and ceilings, while Katie herself, half-mad with terror, ran blindly on, knowing even as she did that there was no escape. And then the dream began to change, and she was in a different place, a cold place with high, white walls, and she saw that the laughter came from Jonathan and an elegant dark-haired woman with blood-red lips and vampire teeth named Lona. They were standing together looking down on her, while Katie crouched small before them, trying to cover herself with her arms, trying in vain to hide her nakedness.

She woke at noon to a dull, punishing headache, her body cramped and cold, the blankets kicked away.

The laughter lingered.

There was a moment of sick bewilderment before she understood that the laughter was coming from the radio, which she’d left on. Canned laughter. The station was airing some old, near-forgotten radio comedy show.

Chapter 19

Rose Nickerson dabbed mercurochrome on the inside of her wrist, painting the scratch Tiger had left when he’d leapt from her arms yesterday. About three inches long, it was deep and, right now, on fire. She blew on it, suspecting infection. “What’s gotten into you, Tiger?” she said to the orange cat reflected in the medicine chest mirror.

Tiger sat on her haunches on the laundry hamper, looking up at his mistress in that patient way he did when he was waiting for her to put food in his dish. But she’d already done that.

“Don’t worry, Tiger,” she said, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “we’ll get rid of him.” Tiger seemed to relax, began washing his face.

Rose knew very well what had gotten into her old friend. Tiger had heard Harvey’s voice just as she had, heard his warning. She didn’t know how he had, but she didn’t question it. Weren’t cats known for their mystic powers? It was just that nothing similar had ever happened with Tiger before. Which only served to further convince her of the rightness of her decision.

“We will banish this stranger from our kingdom,” she said, stroking Tiger behind his ears. He purred his approval.

She had tried to tell him this morning as she was setting out his plate of bacon and eggs, that he had to go, that she had no further need of him. But something, perhaps his silence, the absence of his usual charming self, which now seemed false, made her hesitate, stopped her. But she would not be stopped again. She would not be unkind about it, of course, she thought as she returned the bottle of mercurochrome to its place on the shelf. It was not in her nature to be unkind. But she would be firm. She would make the excuse that her cousin was coming to stay, and she had to free up the room. Surely the good Lord would understand and forgive her small white lie.

She went into the kitchen, the cat padding behind her, where she turned the fishcakes browning in the frying pan for lunch and put on the peas to heat. Perhaps, when she disposed of her immediate problem, she would do up a couple of bags of treats and just take them down to Betty’s tomorrow. She certainly had no wish to have her house labeled among the neighborhood children as ‘that mean old hag’s place’. She chuckled at the thought. As she set out the plates—old blue windmill china on a white linen tablecloth which Rose used even when she was alone—and cutlery, she found herself listening with growing apprehension for the sound of the back door opening.

***

At the Belleville police station, Captain Peterson sat behind his massive desk, his door closed, going over the list of names of those people who had been interviewed, the profiles of each, the questions posed in three different ways, the answers never varying. Added to this was the info Jon Shea had dropped off this morning. A growing stack of paper that brought him no closer to solving the mystery. Captain Mike Peterson, a big man, completely gray now, a scant two years from retirement, but still muscled and solid from a disciplined regimen of working out with weights, tapped out a new series of blue dots on the blotter with his ballpoint like he was sending out some new form of coded message. An old habit to help him think.

It wasn’t working. Behind the opaque glass in his door, officers in silhouette moved about. Jangling telephones were muffled. He went back to reading the reports, trying to make a connection, again coming up empty. The captain had a history of solved cases behind him, but this one clearly had him stumped. Nothing added up. What did any of these people have to do with the effigy left in the Summers woman’s bedroom? To the drowning victim?

He went over it all again looking for something he’d missed. There was always something. He just couldn’t find it. Heaving a sigh of momentary defeat, he set the papers aside and picked up the photograph of the kid in the army uniform, the throat smeared with red paint made to look like blood. The long-ago boyfriend, Todd Raynes.

Was it possible he was back from ‘Nam after all these years, not dead at all, but screwed up from the war, a full-fledged psycho, a raving loony toon?

Of course he was a killer, trained to be. It’s what we did. We sent off young innocents filled with romantic notions of war, and developed their dark sides. We all had our dark sides. We’re a world of Christless Jekylls and Hydes, he thought, laying down the photograph, pinching his lower lip between thumb and forefinger.

Shea had persuaded him to put on an extra black and white to patrol the area around the Summers woman’s house. He would have to call it off soon, despite favors owed. They were already short-handed. He considered Sergeant Miller’s theory that Katherine Summers herself needed closer surveillance, but for reasons other than her safety. And though Miller was a dyed-in-the-wool redneck, and not one of the captain’s favorite people by a long shot, it was Mike’s own opinion that Shea, as brilliant as he knew him to be, wasn’t exactly showing objectivity in this particular case.

Maybe Miller’s theory did warrant a closer look.