SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (57 page)

“I can't make them stop. I don't know how.”

“Would you like me to get you some tranquilizers? I could get some from the girls if I ask. They carry around whole damn bags of pharmaceuticals.”

Charlene came to her feet very slowly, holding her head as still as possible so the headache wouldn't thump so hard at her eye sockets, half blinding her. “That might help,” she admitted. “Maybe I could sleep then. Without nightmares.”

Shadow came up the stairs to her and they walked together down the hall to Charlene's room. “Try to think of other things. Think of something pleasant. Leave what I'm doing to me. I know I'm right.”

Are you? Charlene wanted to ask, but didn't.

Are you sure?

~*~

Samson wasn't sure his take on Shadow was right. He could usually compartmentalize people and know what they were about, what motivated them, what made them tick—it was part of his trade. But he wasn't quite sure about the dancer. All he really knew was how he felt about her. And it had to do with sex, primarily. What else could it have to do with, he didn't know her? And sexual attraction tended to fog the perceptions, he had to admit.

“She's a real puzzle,” he said out loud to Pavlov.

The dog pranced around the kitchen floor as if he'd been complimented. If dogs really knew what words meant, Samson thought, they'd kill their masters. How many times had he called Pavlov a shit-eating dead-brain mutt?

Samson swallowed down three coated aspirin tablets with a glass of water from the tap. There was a very slight pounding in his head that he knew would turn into a hangover headache if he didn't nip it in the bud. He moved to the wall to turn out the light. In the hallway to the bedroom he said to the dog, “She bristled when I asked about kids. I think she has kids. I never messed with a woman who was a mother before. It gets overly complicated, you know? There's a lot of responsibilities go along with kids. You'd think Shadow would have stretch marks and shit, but this woman, she's got the smoothest belly . . .”

He moved into the bedroom without turning on the overhead light. Pavlov jumped on the bed and began circling and pawing at the covers to make a spot for sleeping.

“Get outta the bed, boy. That's where I sleep. Since when do you think you're so privileged?”

The dog halted his fretful bed-making and stared at him with big sad eyes.

“Down!”

Pavlov jumped to the floor, ran to Samson's side to be petted and forgiven. He thrust his broad head beneath his master's hand and pushed up. Samson scratched between his amber-brown eyes. “Good boy. Good, Pavlov.”

In the adjoining bathroom, in the dark, Samson found one of his toothbrushes and the Colgate. As he brushed his teeth, he grinned. Pavlov was butting his legs from behind. Damn dog was like a cat, rubbing up against him.

He threw water on his face, soaped it, rinsed. While he took off his clothes and dropped them to the floor, Pavlov stood back, tail wagging, making deep, happy growls.

“This girl . . .” Samson began. “Woman, I mean. She must have children. When I brought up kids, she left, didn't even give me a backward glance. Now I figure, hey, I put a fifty on the goddamn table, that entitled me to longer than I got to talk to her, but what the hell. Something I said offended her, I have to chalk the money up to a loss.

“And see, this is really a change for me, Pavlov, because I don't hand out money to dancers. You know me. El Cheapo. El Ultimo Cheapo when it comes to the titty bars. Which I'm not particularly proud of, by the way, being a cheap bastard. I just don't see handing out dough for talk. Talk that costs can't be worth a plug nickel. It's like paying for a fuck—how much can it be worth? Until now that was my policy, tight-assed as it may sound.”

He went to the bed and tried straightening the sheets. He heard the dog circling at the end of the bed, making a nest in the pile of discarded clothes there.

“So if she's got kids, and her husband's dead—did I mention he was a suicide? Now that's interesting, even the way she told me he was a suicide was intriguing. Now if she's got kids, then she's dancing to support them. So what I want to know, what mother proud of her kids, dancing to send them to school, doesn't want to talk about them? What's the problem with her anyway? She acted like I'd asked her if she ever used strawberry douche or something. Definitely weird.”

He crawled beneath the sheet and reached out to click the button on his alarm radio. He had to get up before noon. He ought to wash the clothes Pavlov was using for a bed before he started his shift. Going to get more doggy smelling in here soon if he didn't.

“Did I also mention she's got great lips? And eyes so dark they look like black coal. And when she talks, her eyes are serious—dead-on drop-dead serious—but her mouth keeps trying to smile. That sort of betrays her, doesn't it? Damn mystifying if you ask me.”

The dog must have fallen asleep. He had stopped pawing at the clothes and Samson couldn't hear anything from him.

But the boxer didn't care about his master's women.

After all, he was just a pesty dog.

~*~

As soon as Samson walked into the squad room for his shift he was called into the lieutenant's office.

“We think there might be a connection between the three guys found floating in the bay.”

Samson took a chair and waited. He had heard about the floaters, but hadn't known they were homicides. He hadn't seen the news on television for days. “Out of our jurisdiction, aren't they? Wouldn't that be something for the Harris County Sheriff’s office?”

“Would be,” Epstein said, “but they're getting nervous. The unidentified floaters turn out to have records, all three of them. Two of them found naked—the last two. Also poisoned.”

“You're saying it's serial? But you said two. We need three to make it serial. Was the first one connected?” Samson felt a buzzing in his head at this news. Whenever serial killers worked Houston, he was the one they used to head the task force. He had spent most of his career studying these killers. He was the one they sent to Quantico for the FBI's annual training and updates on serial killers. He knew when the Sheriff's office thought they'd stumbled on these kinds of murders, they didn't have the trained personnel to handle them.

“We're not totally sure on the first kill. It was a stabbing and that one had his clothes on when he was found. But he had a record, too. Was wanted for parole violation for sexual assault. So it could still be serial, if the latest is the third one. Looks like it's turning into that. Here's the files on the victims.” He handed over three manila folders. “You know what to do. No one's linked them yet. The papers aren't onto it, and we'll want to keep it that way as long as possible.”

“A task force?” Samson thumbed through the folders, casually looking for the autopsy reports. “Not yet. If there's another one . . .”

“Gotcha.” Samson stood and headed out to his desk. He spent the next hour studying the files, lost in thought so deep he didn't hear the noise of typewriters, computer printers, telephones, and conversation in the room. There was a yellow Post-it note attached to the third victim's file. “This one and the one before had frequented bars in Montrose the nights before their murders. The second victim's car was found in a Burger King parking lot.”

It was unsigned. One of the county cops had done the legwork and found this bit of information. Why hadn't he noted which bars. Jesus, Montrose had back-to-back bars, pubs, cafes, strip joints, clubs. Which bars had the victims been in? And was this the only connection between them besides their rap sheets? Since Montrose was known as a predominately gay hangout in the city, were the victims homosexuals? What was it about gays got them killed, anyway? This sure wasn't connected to the kids from the Woodlands. By the time the third victim had died, the boys were in protective custody.

That was something he'd have to find out. The car in the Burger King, what was that about? Was the victim transported somewhere? That and about a thousand other questions had to be answered before he could even get involved in the investigation. He picked up the phone and dialed the County Sheriff's office. He had to track down the nameless Post-it noter.

Twenty-Three

It was a Saturday night when he came into the Blue Boa. It was crowded, peak hour, near midnight. He hadn't yet reached an empty table when he saw the cop talking to the woman.

He turned and threaded his way through the men, to the entrance door and out onto the sidewalk. Narrow call. He knew Samson. Had even interviewed him once, briefly, a long time ago—three years? Five years?

He had visited the downtown police station and announced that he was a mystery novelist. He took along a few of his jacket covers to prove it. They let him talk to some of the detectives who weren't all that busy right then. Samson was one of them. Someone told him Detective Mitchell Samson was unofficially the serial killer specialist. He was always called in to head those cases. At the time, Son thought he shouldn't talk to him, but he couldn't help being curious.

He was especially careful what questions he asked. He said he didn't do crime suspense novels anyway; he wasn't into serial killers, so he didn't want to waste the detective's time. He asked a few innocuous questions involving procedure and office politics and how things were set up in the event of an arrest, and then he moved on to a patrolman who offered to let him ride in a squad car that night, get a feel for the “real thing,” as the young cop had put it.

But Son would never forget Samson's face. That hard, intelligent stare. The loose movements that belied the strength of the big muscled body beneath the casual attire. The slight twist to the mouth when he paused to think before answering a question.

Now, in the Blue Boa, he had only seen him from behind and, for a brief moment, in profile when he turned his head, but he had recognized him immediately.

What was the cop doing with the dancers? Did he often visit the dives and take out the prostitutes? It wouldn't surprise Son, not a bit. Cops were screwy to begin with, else they wouldn't be cops, so hanging out in low-class nightclubs seemed right up their alley.

He wouldn't be onto the same idea Son was, would he? Ever since Stan had told him the victims found in the bay had a connection to the club scene in Montrose, Son had been prowling the area, looking for signs. He was like a jungle cat, hunting spoor. He talked to the girls, he talked to the managers, the customers, the street people. He did it, of course, in the most unobtrusive way possible, so no one would think him overly interested in things he shouldn't be interested in.

Mostly he let people talk. They got around to what he wanted to know sooner or later, though usually it was later. He didn't mind. He had plenty of time late at night while Mother slept.

And he was a novelist. Maybe not much of one, but he picked up on things about people others didn't.

Tones of voice, a shifting of the glance, the words behind the words, the story inside the story. Lies people tried to hide. Lies they believed to be true. Lies they used to make themselves look better. It was strange not everyone noticed these telltale clues. Were they just stupid or unconcerned or were they so locked inside their own skins they couldn't see out the other guy's eyes?

Son had long since known people were, on the whole, incredibly ignorant. Like cattle. Feed them, give them water, lead them around by the nose. They liked that. Ask them to think, analyze, question, collect information, and forget about it. It was just too much trouble for your average Joe.

Maybe Samson was doing the same thing as Son, casing the area, looking for leads. Sniffing spoor.

Son would have to do something now that he really hated doing. He'd have to watch his back. No more lounging easily, fearlessly, making himself at home in the area, making friends. Every moment he spent here from now on would entail being on guard, checking where the cop was before he chose a club. He could always say this was research, but if he was caught too many times by the cop, and if the cop noticed he was asking too many questions, he'd fall into the category of suspect.

That hard intelligent stare would turn on him and dissect him like a frog, flay him open to prod at his brain.

Detective Samson was not one of the cattle herd.

~*~

Shadow was distracted as the cop talked. She heard maybe every other sentence he spoke. She couldn't concentrate because something boiled and writhed inside her mind. She had made another date. The kind that might or might not lead to a poisoning. The man calling himself John—and that was a crock—had sat at her table earlier, before the cop came in. She listened to him a while, saying barely enough to keep him talking, and her mind started working. She wanted to wait until she had him in Seabrook before asking her list of questions. She suggested he meet her after work outside Wendy's. She suggested he might like to go home with her. He agreed that he wanted whatever she wanted.

“I'm sorry?” She tried to catch up on the conversation. The cop had asked her something, but she didn't know what.

“Where are you? You're certainly not here talking with me.”

He didn't sound peeved, just curious. If he'd sounded peeved, as if she owed him her complete attention, that wouldn't have set well. “I guess I'm daydreaming. It's rude, I know. I'm sorry. What were you saying?”

They had talked about nothing, nothing at all of any import. He had not again asked her anything personal, not since days before when she walked out on him.

“Nothing that needs repeating,” he said and then smiled.

She did like his smile. He didn't do it often so that when he did smile, it meant something. “I'm really sorry. I'm afraid I have to leave a little early tonight. You don't mind, do you? I can give some of the money back . . .”

He waved his hand expansively. “Wouldn't think of a refund. Maybe we'll apply it toward the next time.”

She cocked her head. “You really like sitting here and talking to me, don't you?”

“I wouldn't do it otherwise.”

“You don't feel it's demeaning to pay a woman to talk to you?”