Tonight You're Mine (17 page)

She turned off the bedside lamp and, for the first time in years, drifted off to sleep without turning on the night-light. Suddenly she saw the image of Raoul Vega the way he looked a few hours ago, his face wreathed with smiles. “Did you marry him?” he'd asked. “The handsome one I made the cross for?” And then, “Such a talented man. A genius…he appreciated art.”

She jerked awake, her vision blurry. Back then I told Mr. Vega I was having the cross made for my cousin Ellen, she thought. I
never
told him it was for a man, especially a man he would describe as talented, a genius. But he knew who it was for. He
knew
.

So who had informed him? she asked herself as she dozed back to sleep, but she already had the answer. She had told only one person about her relationship with Paul, she had told only one person for whom she was having the necklace made.

Carmen.

3

Izzy Dooley cruised slowly down the street in his twelve-year-old Plymouth. He spotted the small white brick house with no lights burning inside. He also spotted the patrol car parked one house down. His heart did an uncomfortable little flip at the sight. He settled down, though, when he saw the profile of the cop inside. His head was bent forward—asleep on the job, Izzy thought with a smirk. To Protect and to Serve—right. To eat doughnuts and to sleep was more like it. Izzy glanced at his watch. It was 3:20
A.M.
Some guys just weren't night people, not like him.

Izzy thought of himself as a vampire, a creature of the night, moving around dangerously only after the sun went down. In fact, he'd seen the movie
Interview With the Vampire
five times and even decided he looked like Louis, played by Brad Pitt. Of course, in the movie Brad had all his teeth and a few less wrinkles, but the resemblance was definitely there, especially when Izzy's hair was clean and swung freely around his shoulders. He was always surprised more people didn't comment on it.

Izzy drove around the block and parked on the street behind the white house. Then he moved through the yard of the brown house facing the street, reached the fence surrounding the white brick, and half crawled, half ran around to the gate. It swung open, not even latched, and on the handle hung a smashed padlock. Izzy stole a look back at the motionless profile of the cop in the patrol car, then entered the backyard.

He froze when he saw the doghouse. It was a small doghouse, certainly not one that could shelter a Doberman like the maniac that had attacked him earlier. He'd gotten away from it, but his arm and his calf still throbbed from the bites.

Shaken by his earlier canine experience, Izzy waited five full minutes near the gate before he was certain no dog was going to charge him. Then he assured himself that even if a dog were in that little house, it would be small enough for him to handle. He was being overly cautious, wasting time.

He pulled the gate shut and latched it. Then he looked at the windows of the house. The blinds were pulled, but absolutely no light spilled around the sides. Even the dusk-to-dawn light was weak—just a five-foot pole topped by a glass ornament with a hundred-watt lightbulb inside. With the gate closed, the yard encircled by a tall wooden fence, no light inside the house, and the outside light so feeble it couldn't reach the corners of the yard, he felt safe. Nothing to worry about here.

He removed a switchblade from his pocket along with a ring of keys. He slipped forward to the back door and gently tried a key. It didn't fit. There weren't many others. He picked a second key. It slipped into the lock. Grinning, he turned it. The door opened with only a slight squeak.

He stepped in and stood quietly for a moment. Absolute silence. He left the door open behind him, not wanting to take a chance on making another unnecessary squeak when he closed it. An open door also meant a hastier retreat.

Izzy took three more steps into the house, stopping when he reached two doorways. He peered into the one on his right. Unfortunately, a vampire trait he'd not yet acquired was the ability to see in the dark. He squinted, as if this would help. It didn't. He couldn't resist creeping in a few inches. His foot collided with something large and soft and to his shame he almost screamed, thinking of the Doberman. But it was a stuffed animal. Some kind of big stuffed animal. Probably a kid's room, but he didn't hear the sound of breathing. Sorry, no one home.

He backed out of the room and turned toward the other one. He heard something and stiffened. What was that sound? Not a light being switched on. Not a telephone receiver being lifted. But a whisper of movement…

Blinding pain shot through his lower back at the same time a hand covered his mouth. Something—a knife—had plunged into the base of his spine, severing vital nerves with one powerful, vicious puncture.

Izzy fell to his knees, then slammed forward onto his face. He tasted blood from his broken nose, felt it running down his throat. Before he realized what was happening, a figure flipped him on his back and stuffed a big terry washcloth into his mouth so far back it brushed his throat, making him gag. By now his eyes had adjusted a bit to the darkness and he could see faintly. The figure above him sat back, and Izzy's eyes widened in complete shock. A couple of grunts escaped him before a fist drove the washcloth farther into his mouth, cutting off most of his air. He shut up.

He felt himself being dragged. The lower half of his body was paralyzed so there wasn't much he could do but flail his arms. He tried to shout, but the effort only made the dry washcloth rub against his soft palate, choking him.

When they reached the door to the outside, Izzy tried to grab the door frame. He was able to hold on for a few seconds, but a hard yank finally pulled him free. His head thudded sickeningly as it bounced off the step onto the concrete walkway, landing sideways. From this angle he saw the little doghouse. For the first time he wished it weren't empty. A dog, even a small one, would cause a racket that could save him, rescue him from this totally unexpected and undoubtedly fatal turn of events.

But there was no dog. There was no sound except his body being dragged over the stiff, cold grass. Finally the dragging stopped. He looked up at the stars and mysteriously dredged up the ancient memory of his mother singing “When You Wish Upon a Star” to him before he went to sleep. How little he had been, how young and sick she had been. And then she was gone and no one ever sang to him again.

He felt the upper half of his body being lifted, then propped against the wooden fence. A small circle of metal pressed against his temple. He didn't have to see to know what
that
was. He felt strangely calm, as if his vampire spirit had moved outside his body.

He paid no attention to the gun. Instead he looked up. There were thousands of stars—distant, beautiful, but unlike in the song, uncaring. He made no wishes. Instead, he merely gazed longingly at the sparkling orbs until, for Izzy Dooley, their magic light suddenly blinked out forever.

4

Her feet were cold—so cold. It was so hard to see. But she could hear them.

“She thought she had us,” Magaro was saying.

“She almost did,” Zand answered, snorting something.

“No she didn't. It would have been better if we could have killed her like I wanted—”

Ringing. More ringing.

Nicole kicked, put her hands over her ears, then opened her eyes. Everything was blurry and dim.

Ring.

“Phone,” she mumbled, throwing a hand over her eyes while she reached for the receiver with the other. “ ‘Lo.”

“Mommy!” Shelley's voice, almost unbearably shrill and cheerful. “Were you still
asleep
?”

“Yeah. ‘Fraid so. Something wrong?”

“No. Aunt Carmen thought you might like for me to call and say hi before I go to school.”

“She was right.” Nicole swallowed around the dry lump that was her tongue. “Have a good day, honey.”

“Mommy, you sound funny.”

“I do? Guess I'm just sleepy.”

“No, you sound sick. What? Uh, wait a minute. Aunt Carmen wants to talk to you.”

Nicole would have killed for a small cup of water by her bed. She felt like she'd eaten sand. In a moment Carmen came on the line. “Nicole?”

“Um-humm.” She was aware of noise in the background. Something rhythmic.

“You sound
awful
. What's
wrong
with you?”

The sound was clearer. Music. “Can't ‘splain right now.”

Carmen lowered her voice. “Are you with a
man
?”

Nicole sat up in bed. “No! For heaven's sake, Carmen, I—” She broke off when she realized the music wasn't coming over the phone. It was in her own house.

“Nicole—”

“Shhh!” She listened. She recognized. She went cold all over.

“Nicole, you're scaring me! What—”

Nicole dropped the receiver and jumped out of bed. She weaved as her feet hit the floor and all the memories of the night before flooded over her. The attack. The police station. The hospital. The Seconal. The visual memories slid across her mind quickly, wiped away by the auditory memories conjured up by the familiar music coming from her living room.

“God, what's going on?” she mumbled, heart pounding.

“Nicole!
Nicole!
” she could hear Carmen shouting. “Answer me!”

She ignored Carmen's pleas and ran barefoot into the hall, then the living room. The stereo was on, the sound much lower than she usually set it, but still easily heard by anyone fully awake. Easily heard and dreadfully familiar.

“Rhapsody in Blue.”

Nicole walked slowly to the stereo. She was used to listening to CD's, but what played was a cassette tape. The plastic container lay on a shelf beside the amp. She picked it up, knowing what she would see. Inside the front cover was a picture of Paul Dominic wearing a tuxedo and sitting at a Steinway grand piano. The title of the cassette read
Dominic, Gershwin, and Carnegie Hall
. “The new tape he played for me the last night we were together,” Nicole whispered, dropping the cassette container onto the soft blue carpeting.

How long had the music been playing? It could have been hours, because the tape player would automatically flip sides and play a tape endlessly until it was removed.

She stood still, listening to the four-bar passage that bridges the long piano cadenza into the famous
Andantino moderate
melody. Then the music soared as the song moved into the development of the slow theme, the piano trading off with the orchestra until the rhapsody was brought to its spectacular conclusion.

Nicole closed her eyes, her breath coming in short, shallow bursts. There was a pause as the tape flipped sides. Then began “The Man I Love.” She dropped to her knees, a deep, ragged moan escaping her. She wrapped her arms around her waist and rocked back and forth as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Paul,” she cried, remembering this song playing in the background as they lay close together in the big, beautiful room on the third floor of the Dominic house, the room filled with roses and stereos, and Paul's grand piano.

“Paul, did you come into my house and put on this tape?” she asked aloud. “If you did, what does it mean? You're following me. Why? To love me or to torment me?”

She put her head down again, this time not closing her eyes. It was then she saw her bare feet and froze. The soles bore dark red streaks and smudges. She touched them gingerly, although she already knew she wasn't hurt. There was no pain. But instinctively she knew the stains were blood.

Not bothering to turn off the stereo, she stood and crept back into the hall, flipping on the light. Suddenly something seemed to coil and move in her stomach like a snake. She stared for what seemed an endless time at the huge circle of darkness on her pale blue carpet. A trail led from the circle to the back door.

Still barefoot, she walked through the stain and opened the back door, which was unlocked. First she looked at Jesse's empty doghouse. Then she looked at her futile attempts at a flower garden. Finally she looked at the figure hanging from a branch of the oak at the back of her yard.

Without hesitation, her face immobile, she drifted across the dry grass, the breeze blowing her flimsy nightgown around her legs. Her eyes were open, but she felt as if it were not sight leading her forward. The body was like a magnet, drawing her inexorably toward it. She didn't stop until her head bumped into a boot.

Suddenly she snapped back to acute consciousness. She gazed at the two booted feet, turning outward. Above them were jeans with ragged hems. Above the jeans, a white T-shirt and a leather jacket. And above the leather jacket was a black hood.

A black hood exactly like the ones found fifteen years ago on the bodies of Ritchie Zand and Luis Magaro.

“Paul,
no
,” Nicole whispered desperately. “Please, God, don't let him have done this.”

She stared at the figure. It wasn't just still. It was rigid. Rigor mortis. This was
death
. But whose? And when had he been hanged?

“I have to cut him down,” she murmured, her stomach turning as she stared at the hood covering a head tilted on a broken neck. She turned and headed back to the house, wondering where she'd put the stepladder, which knife would be strong enough to cut the rope. She stepped on a rock with her bare foot. Pain shot up her leg, and with it mental clarity.

Cut him
down
? What did she think she was doing? Tampering with evidence, that's what she would have been doing. It was bad enough that she'd gone so close to the body. She could have already destroyed a small piece of evidence.

Normal emotion and reason flooding back through her like a charge of electricity, she ran into the house, slamming the back door behind her. Dashing into the bedroom, she spotted the phone receiver lying on the bed. She picked it up, listening to the rapid pulsing noise of a broken connection. Carmen had hung up.

Although Nicole's hands shook so violently she could hardly hold the receiver, she managed to punch the reset button, then 911. Eight days ago she'd done the same thing when her father shot himself in the head.

A hundred questions they asked. Three minutes into the call, Nicole snapped, “For God's sake, there's a dead body in my backyard. Do
I
have to solve the murder myself before I can get the cops here?” Then she slammed down the phone on the still-chattering operator.

She looked at her flimsy nightgown. A robe? No, the police would be here soon, hopefully, and nightclothes made her feel too vulnerable. She reached for jeans, but they reminded her of last night and she tossed them on the floor. Finally she grabbed her gray sweatpants, then thought of her bloodstained feet. She couldn't face the police without a quick shower.

Nicole had scrubbed herself nearly raw last night after the attack, and the soap and hot water this morning was hardly soothing. She washed as quickly as possible, unable to ignore the dark water that ran beneath her feet. Last night that blood had given someone life. Now it was swirling uselessly down the drain with soapsuds. How fragile life could be, she realized with fright, how easily disposed of were its vital elements.

Uniformed police were the first to arrive, just as Nicole was tying the laces of her Reeboks. She ran to open the front door and watched the patrol car pull into the driveway. Then she looked down the block and saw another patrol car—the same one she'd seen parked there in the early hours of morning. Frowning, she looked at the clock. Eight-thirty. He should have been long gone. If she'd known he was still out there, she would have gone to him immediately.

She walked outside, her gaze, like those of the two officers who had just arrived, trained on the patrol car by the curb. One officer began striding toward the car. The other, a female, watched Nicole as she hurried across the lawn. “What's he still doing here?” Nicole asked. “Why isn't he getting out of the car?”

“I don't know.” The officer was young and very pretty and trying hard to look tough.

Nicole stood mesmerized as the young woman also began walking toward the other patrol car. By then the male officer was looking through the patrol car's open window. In a moment he withdrew his head as if he'd received an electric shock.

“He's dead!” he shouted. “Shot through the head!”

The female officer stopped cold. Nicole's breath left her in a long sigh and the scenery began spinning around her. A patrolman sent to protect her had been murdered. An unknown man had gotten into her house and been murdered, maybe just a few feet from her bedroom door, and then hanged in her backyard, all while she slept, dreaming of Magaro and Zand.

She collapsed into a lotus position and bent her head forward, willing the blood back to her brain. Forcing air into her lungs, she chanted, “I will not faint. I will not faint,” like a mantra.

She was still sitting and chanting when someone put a hand on her shoulder. Nicole gasped and looked up to see Carmen, her face pale, her hair carelessly pulled back with a rubber band, her forehead creased. “You nearly scared me to death on the phone. What in God's name is going on here?”

“Is Shelley all right?” Nicole whispered.

“Of course. Bobby took her to school.”

“Oh,” Nicole managed. With death all around her, her main concern was her child's safety.

Carmen kneeled beside her, taking her chin in her large, lovely hands and forcing Nicole to meet her eyes. “What
is
it? Why are the police here? What's
happened
?”

“They're dead. Both of them.”

“
Who's
dead?”

“The policeman in the car. The man in the backyard.”

“The man in the backy
ard
?”

“The one hanging from the tree.” Nicole's voice quavered.

Carmen's face slackened. Then she gave Nicole a firm shaking. “Snap out of it. You're not making any sense.
Who
is dead in your yard?”

“I
told
you I don't
know
.” The world was coming back into focus for Nicole and along with it her temper. Couldn't Carmen give her a moment to pull herself together? “Back off for a minute and let me get my thoughts straight.”

People were coming out of their houses, and Nicole watched the uniformed officers begin to control the crime scene, backing people away, talking to them calmly. I'd be a terrible cop, Nicole thought I could never keep my cool that way.

“Nicole?” Carmen persisted.

Nicole took a deep breath. “After you left last night, I was mugged.”

“
What?
” Carmen trumpeted, drawing the attention of the neighbors and the police.

“Carmen, are you going to let me tell this or keep shouting at me?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Anyway, the guy who mugged me got my keys and identification. Ray DeSoto, the detective I told you about at dinner last night, brought me home, then posted someone out here to watch the house. Someone got in anyway. When I got up, there was blood in the hall—so much blood—and I looked in the backyard and there was a man, dead, wearing a hood. A black hood. He's hanging from my tree. I called the police. When I came out to meet them, the patrol car from last night was still here. And they went to see why and…”

“And the officer is dead.”

Nicole nodded. “Shot in the head.”

Carmen sat down beside her on the grass, her mouth slightly open, her eyes dazed. “Nicole, are you
sure
about all this?” she said finally.

Nicole looked at her incredulously. “Do you think it was a dream?” Another patrol car pulled up, closely followed by a third unmarked car with a flashing light. “The black-baked man getting out of the car is Sergeant Ray DeSoto. Believe me now?”

Ray approached Nicole first. “Are you all right?” he asked, worry in his tone although his face was impassive. “Have you been hurt?”

“No, she's just frightened,” Carmen answered for her.

Ray looked at Carmen. “And your name is?”

“Mrs. Carmen Vega. Nicole and I have been friends since childhood.”

Ray nodded. “Would you two mind staying out here until we're ready to look at the other guy?”

“Why?” Carmen asked.

“So we won't disturb evidence,” Nicole answered dully. “We're all right, Ray. Do what you need to.”

Ray joined the officers at the patrol car containing the dead policeman. “I know this is a terrible time to say it, but he's great-looking,” Carmen murmured. “It's obvious he likes you, too.”

“You're right—this is an awful time, Carmen. But he is good-looking. However, he's just being nice to me.”

“No he's not. I can tell.”

“You can not. Besides, the last thing on my mind right now is romance. Can we talk about something else?”

“What? Dead bodies?”

Nicole closed her eyes. “I give in. Your subject is better.”

Carmen jabbed her in the ribs and she looked up to see that Ray had returned. “Can you take me in the house now?”

“Yes, I think so.” She and Carmen both rose.

“Mrs. Vega, I'd rather you stay out here,” Ray said. “The fewer people we have contaminating evidence the better.”

“I wouldn't mess up anything,” Carmen protested, sounding disappointed.

Nicole looked at her. “Carmen, believe me, you don't
want
to see the house or the body. It's not like watching this kind of thing on television.”

Carmen nodded. “Sure. I sounded like a ghoul.”

Ray smiled at her. “That was just perfectly natural curiosity, Mrs. Vega.” He took Nicole's arm. “Ready?”

“No, but I guess I have no choice.”

As they walked back in the house, she noticed that Ray had taken out a notebook and he wore thin plastic gloves. He stopped in the middle of the living room, his expression baffled. “Did you put on music before or after you found the body?”

“I didn't put it on,” Nicole said haltingly. “It was playing when I woke up.”

Ray raised his eyebrows, then turned toward the stereo. “It's a cassette tape of Paul Dominic playing Gershwin at Carnegie Hall,” she said.

Ray looked at her. “Your tape?”

“No. I have none of Paul's music.”

Their gazes held for a moment. Then Ray wrote in his notebook, pressed the Stop button on the stereo with the end of his pen, and looked at the cassette case. “
Dominic, Gershwin, and Carnegie Hall
. His last concert. His last recording.”

“How did you know that?”

“I've had reason to do research on Dominic lately.” His eyes traveled beyond her to the large dark spot in the hallway. “Someone lost a lot of blood there.”

“There's a trail leading into the backyard,” Nicole explained. “I think he was killed or injured here, then pulled outside. I was out of it from the attack and the Seconal, but he still couldn't have made much noise. At least I don't think so. And I've told you I walked right through the blood, opened the back door, and ran barefoot to the body.”

“By the way you keep referring to ‘the body,' I'd say you've never seen this man before.”

Nicole blinked at him. “I guess I never said anything to anyone except Carmen. Ray, I don't
know
who it is. He's wearing a black hood.”

“A black hood?”

“Yes,” Nicole said shakily. “Sound familiar?”

“Like the hoods over the heads of Magaro and Zand. Same material and everything?”

She lowered her eyes. “I never actually saw those hoods, just pictures. I never even understood their significance.”

“The hanging and the hoods are what made some people think it was some kind of cult killing, like the Tate-LaBianca murders. Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring were hanged from a chandelier. Only back then, it was a bloody towel that covered Jay Sebring's face, not a hood.”

“My, what a memory,” Nicole said weakly, her stomach turning at the thought.

“I was fascinated by that case. It's one of the things that made me want to be a cop.”

“But you would have been so young to have followed the case.”

“Manson keeps coming up for parole and it's always carried by the news. It's hard to forget him or those murders.” He glanced at the back door. “You went out that way.”

“Yes. I woke up—actually, Shelley's phone call awakened me—and I heard the music and ran in here. I didn't even notice the blood on the carpet in the hall. Then I saw the cassette.
Then
I saw the blood. I followed the trail into the yard.”

“Which is what we're going to do now.”

“You want me to go with you?”

Ray's surly middle-aged black partner joined them. “Not necessary for you to go now. You'll just mess up the crime scene.”

Ray shot the man an icy stare. “It
is
necessary for her to go, Waters. She might be able to identify him. And she won't mess up anything.”

Nicole could almost hear Waters's teeth grinding in irritation. He was the same detective who was with Ray the morning her father had been found. She guessed him to be in his late forties or early fifties, slightly overweight and graying at the temples, with a large face and eyes that seemed as if they could look right into your soul. He'd be nice-looking if he'd smile, Nicole thought. Smiles didn't seem to come easily to Waters, though.

They skirted the circular bloodstain, which Nicole guessed was at least two feet across, and Ray opened the back door. “No breaking and entering.”

“Did you leave the door unlocked last night?” Waters asked.

“No. I'm certain I didn't,” Nicole said with more assurance than she felt. She'd been such a mess last night. She
always
checked the doors before bed, but she didn't actually remember doing it several hours ago.

“Don't touch anything,” Waters ordered as they headed toward the body.

“Lighten up,” Ray snapped. “I don't think you two have been properly introduced. Nicole, this is Sergeant Cyrus Waters. Waters,
her
name is Mrs. Chandler and she knows not to touch anything.”

“Well, excuse the hell outta me,” Waters muttered.

Nicole smiled at him. “I'll be careful.”

Looking slightly placated, Waters put his hands in his pockets and turned down his scowl a notch.

Nicole's footsteps slowed as they neared the body. The beat-up cowboy boots looked pathetic pointed outward. A fresh bird dropping glistened on the ragged jeans. The fingers of the hanging hands were dirty and stiff.