SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (60 page)

“Please don't shout, Son. I'll go to the doctor if that's what you want. Just don't get worked up so.”

“I'm sorry. I told you I was scared. I'll call for an appointment tomorrow, or rather today, after I get a nap.” He stood shakily. “I'll let you rest now. I really didn't mean to disturb you.”

“Get some sleep, darling. Tomorrow things will look brighter, mark my words.” She reached and turned out the lamp.

Son shut the door quietly. He moved through the dark hall to his own room, her scent in his nostrils. Baby powder, cotton gowns ironed and crisp, old paperskin, old denture-breath.

His mother was dying. This time she was going to die.

But what would he do without her, what would he do if he didn't have her to care for?

What would he do if he was left alone, all alone, in the world?

Twenty-Five

Shadow knew she was taking him home with her.

“I'd like to see where you live. Not many people know, do they?” Samson looked around the club as if someone might have overheard him.

“I don't talk about my personal life at work. Most of us lie, anyway, to the customers.”

“I've always wondered about that. It makes you work at being fraudulent, doesn't it? I don't mean to imply there's anything wrong with lying to customers about where you live or your name. Hell, it would be a big mistake to let most of these guys know any details. But it just seems lying all the time could make you . . . well, forget what the truth is.”

Shadow thought it over. She didn't like the word “fraudulent” applied to her and that must have shown on her face. “Everyone's a fraud anyway, what's the big deal?”

“I said I didn't mean it was so bad.” He sipped at the Irish coffee. “Like you say, everyone's a fraud when you come right down to it. For instance, I'm a cop so I'm supposed to be brave, upright, and civic-minded.”

“It sounds like the Boy Scout oath. But I suppose you're right. Tell lies long enough and the truth fades out.” She paused. “Which one of those things are wrong? You're not brave? Upright? Civic-minded?”

“Rarely any of the above,” he said, smiling that smile she liked so much. “Will you tell me your real name then?”

She hesitated. “Kay. But I'm not the same person I was when that was my name. Shadow suits me better now.”

“Kay.” He stared into his coffee, mulling over the sound of it. “Katherine?” She nodded slightly. “Kay what?”

“Mandel. My married name. Mandel.” He was the first person in over a year, outside of Charlene, who knew her real name. Why was there such power in a person's name? Under the name of Shadow she was free to be anyone and act in any way she pleased. As Kay Mandel she was held responsible for her actions. That was the magic of a nickname.

“Why don't you call me Mitch?”

She nodded her head. “Well, Mitch, how would you like to take a ride with me?”

“Now? Where to?”

“To where I live.”

He looked startled. She smiled, enjoying surprising him. “It's a long drive. We can go in my car.”

“Why don't I follow you in mine instead?”

She hadn't done that before. Because she meant to kill them. But she knew she didn't mean to kill the cop. In the first place he didn't fit into the type of man who needed to be destroyed, wiped from the face of the earth. He fell in the category of Wipee. He did the same thing she did, which was to clean the streets of its scum layer. They had this in common. In the second place—What the hell was she doing, did she even know?

Her heart rate went into warp speed. She knew what she was doing. She wanted him. In bed. As a lover. She must have known that the first time she saw him, but she couldn't admit it then. Now since she had met with him and talked a lot, she knew it was inevitable. She actually did have hormones. She really was still a normal woman with some kind of sex drive left. It was astounding, but true.

“Okay,” she said. “I'm ready to leave now. How about you?”

He stood and came to her chair, pulling it back as she rose. The way gentlemen used to do for ladies. The way Scott used to . . .

She broke off from that thought and turned to Mitch. “I have to change and get my things. I'll be in the parking lot in a minute if you want to wait there.”

She felt his eyes tracking her as she moved to the dressing rooms. For the first time in ages she felt embarrassed at how little she had on. The lace jacket covered nothing. The G-string covered less. What had possessed her to get into this business?

Oh yes. Survival. Vastly overrated as it was.

She walked as unselfconsciously as possible through the curtains to the back. Taking home a cop. Seducing a policeman.

She must be out of her mind.

~*~

They lay separated by inches, breathing heavily, sweat drying on their bodies. The air conditioning vent over the bed blew cold air and chilled her flesh, but she did not move to cover herself.

“I might be down this way more often,” he said. “I'm taking over a case. You hear about the bodies washing in?”

Her breath caught. “Oh . . . yeah, I did.”

Funny how a man's mind went straight back to business the moment after intercourse. It had been difficult for Shadow. They had made love in her bed, the same bed where men had died. Men had bled. She could even feel the plastic sheeting deep under a layer of two blankets, the sheets, and bedspread they lay atop. She wondered if he noticed. He might think she was incontinent. She almost laughed aloud.

Then she thought about him heading the case of the poisoned men. It sobered her. Her sweat dried in the chilly air and she shivered. This meant he was now her greatest enemy. Lover. Enemy. Which was he?

He turned to her, wrapping her in his arms. Her face fit into the crook of his neck. She loved his scent. She could drink it in all night. He was her lover. He could never be an enemy to her. She would never let him find out what she had done. And meant to do. Never.

“If I'm down here more often, that means I might be able to see you here, rather than at the club.”

“Ummm.” She snuggled deeper into the crevice of his body. Her breasts pressed flat against his chest. She looped one leg over his hip. “It's been a long time since . . .”

“I thought so,” he said and said no more.

She didn't want to explain. He spoke again finally, telling one of those truths they had kept from one another. “For me too.” She believed him.

“I was engaged a few months ago. It didn't work out,” he said. “She was class. I was a gutter-crawler. She wanted invitations to the wedding printed in gold. I wanted to hand out my business card to friends.”

Though he was trying to make light of it, Shadow understood some of the things he was leaving out. She knew what it meant to be on the outside, out on the edge, not flowing in the mainstream of society. Unless you had been there, you couldn't know how different it was, how alien the rest of the world appeared, how awful those others sometimes treated you.

“Did you love her?”

“I thought I did. But I guess I didn't.”

More truth. She was glad he had not truly loved the other woman. She realized she was jealous of her without knowing anymore than that he had asked her to marry him.

She let her hand rove up and down his back, feeling his muscles there, powerful, strong, the little bumps of his spine, the swell of his buttocks. He was cool to her touch. Dry now, his skin like the marble floors of the mansion, hard and flat.

She felt him growing, excited again. As long as he thought of her and kept his mind away from the murders, she was safe. Safe in his arms, safe to let herself go. He moved a bit and she knew what he wanted to find. If he had to get up to get another condom, she would feel too naked and abandoned.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Wait.” She leaned back in his arms a little, reaching behind her to feel blindly along the bedside table in the dark. Her fingers danced over a little square package. She drew it closer and palmed it. She snuggled again, tearing it open with her teeth. She looked into his shadowed face. Thought he smiled.

“I thought you might want me to leave,” he said softly next to her ear. He nibbled at her earlobe and a delicious thrill went down her body. Her nipples hardened against his chest.

“Not yet,” she said. “Oh no, not yet . . .”

As he fiddled with the condom, getting it on, she turned in his arms, her back to him so they were together like spoons. He slipped into her from behind, his hands seeking and finding her breasts. She bent her head until her eyes were hidden in the bend of his arm. She lifted one leg again, draping it over his hip. She opened to him and let his measured thrusts wash her toward orgasm.

~*~

The fourth floater was identified as Ossie Cherkovania, an escapee from Huntsville Correctional Unit where he had been incarcerated for four years and three months on a guilty charge of murder in the second degree. He had been on the loose for six months. He had a sheet going back to his teens, everything from hotwiring and stealing cars, to assault with a deadly weapon.

Samson sat at his desk chewing the eraser on a pencil. He pulled a yellow notepad over and wrote:

Victims frequented nightclubs in Montrose area.

Victims all have records.

Dod interrupted his thoughts. “ID the guy?”

“Yeah. Escaped TDC six months ago.”

“Good riddance, then. Saved the taxpayers money putting him up.”

Samson moved his gaze from the notepad to Dod. He stared at him, thinking about what he'd said. “What is it? My breath stink?”

“It might. That's not what I was thinking. What you said. About good riddance this guy got offed.”

“Yeah?”

“The others were known perps too. Some on parole.”

“Somebody's cleaning up the city.”

Samson pointed the pencil at Dod. Then he bent to the notepad and added:

3) Killer is vigilante?

“We got us a Charles Fucking Bronson,” Dod said. “But why poison? And how'd he get them to drink the stuff?”

“How do you know they drank it?”

“I can read autopsy reports too. I have a genuine high school diploma.” He grinned to soften the fact he had been snooping in Samson's files.

Samson shrugged. He didn't really care just as long as Dod didn't get in his way. The news stories said the men were poisoned. It never said how. You could just as well overdose someone with a needle full of something as get them to drink it. In the case of Warfarin, getting someone to drink it had to be a really iffy proposition. How did the killer get them to do it?

Samson tore off his note and stuffed it in the new folder on Cherkovania. He bundled the files together and stood, grabbing his jacket.

“Need help?” Dod asked.

“Dod, give it a rest, okay? I need you, I'll send a fucking Marine marching band past your house with a printed invitation.” That reminded him of what he'd told Shadow, about his engagement. And that reminded him of being in bed with the most desirable woman he had made love with in years. Maybe ever. He shook his head as he left the bullpen.

“You don't have to be a bear!” Dod yelled at his back. “I was only trying to help.”

But I do have to be a bear, Samson thought, pushing through the glass doors to the hall. I have to be a big brown roaring-ass grizzly to get your nose out of my cases, you sneaky ladder-climbing dick.

On the street the heat slapped him in the face. After the air-conditioned building, he could hardly draw a good breath. It was like breathing in phlegm. It felt as if his lungs were going in and out and nothing was happening. He hurried to his car, threw the folders on the front seat. When he got in, the enclosed heat made drops of sweat pop out on his face and under his arms. Rivulets set up a stream down his back. The vinyl scorched his legs through the material of his slacks. He got the car started and the air conditioning blowing full blast.

“If I was a polar bear, I'd be on an ice floe in Alaska right now.”

He heard himself and grinned. It was five o'clock in the afternoon and it felt like noon in the Sahara. Houston was experiencing a heat wave that had produced a mini-drought. It had been a month since Samson had seen a drop of rain. Trees in the park drooped sick, wilted limbs. Grass was a shade of green rapidly fading to brown.

It wouldn't be cool enough to tackle the street and ask questions until the sun was down and that wouldn't happen for another two hours.

He thought he'd go to the dark bar section of the Blue Boa and get a Corona. Hell yeah. It was too goddamn hot for any kind of coffee. He'd watch for Big Mac through the window. She'd need another twenty spot by now.

For the next two hours Samson sat on a stool drinking Coronas, although he was on duty, and trying to study the case folders. Most of that time, however, was spent thinking about sex. Sex with a capital S. Sex with Shadow. Sex backwards, forwards, sideways. Kay Mandel. The one the other girls called the Ice Queen.

A nickname he found appropriate only if a person didn't know her intimately. And he hoped no one knew her as intimately as he did. He'd be tempted to take out his six-gun and meet the crud at high noon, blasting away, a regular Rory Calhoun.

At six-thirty, he slipped out a prison photo of Cherkovania he'd had faxed from TDC. He held it out to the barman. “You seen this guy around?”

The slender young man wore a starched white shirt that did not seem to jibe with the scraggly two-day beard he sported. He looked like a man who needed a few good home-cooked meals, pasta maybe.

“Nope.”

“You're sure?”

“I said.”

“You said?”

“I said nope. But I don't pay attention to the people come in here. ‘Cept for you. I know you.” He gave the impression of smiling, but who could tell when his eyes were dead?

“You're the night bartender?”

“Six nights a week. I'm off Saturdays.”

“Who subs for you?”

“Day man. That'd be Charlie.”

Samson put the photo back into the folder. “Thanks.”

“You hunting that fella?”

“Already found him. Just wondered if he'd been around.” Samson didn't elaborate. No point in getting the street clamming up if they discovered he was showing about pictures of dead people, murdered people. They admitted they'd seen a murder victim, they knew there would be more questions. Down at the station maybe. No one wanted a hassle.