Dream Man (18 page)

She wasn’t so tired that she couldn’t give him a “get real” look, and he chuckled. “I’m fine,” she said, though she heard the fretful weakness in her own voice. She ignored it. She would manage; she always had.

“Okay, but I’ll be right outside the door. Sing out if you need me.”

She stood swaying in the small room after he had left, staring longingly at the bathtub and wondering if she could stand upright long enough to take a shower. It would be so embarrassing if Dane had to help her, handling her naked body as if she were a helpless infant.

First things first, though. She was very thirsty, but there was a more pressing concern. When that was taken care of, she gulped two glasses of water, then stood with the cool glass pressed against her forehead. Her mind was still so foggy, every thought such an effort. She needed to remem-ber something, she felt the urgency, but couldn’t concen-trate long enough to bring it to mind. All she wanted to do was sleep. Blessed sleep. She didn’t want to remember.

She really wanted that shower a lot.

Finally the simplest thing to do was to turn on the water and step under it, clothes and all, so that’s what she did. She deliberately left the water not quite lukewarm, knowing that it would wake her up, not wanting to but accepting the necessity. She stood under the cool spray, her face turned up to catch the full blast, and let the fog dissipate. Let memory return. Let the water overcome and wash away the hot salty tears, the way a flood overcomes and obliterates a trickle.

Until it wasn’t enough and she buried her face in her hands, sobs shaking her body.

“Marlie… ?” The worried, impatient tone changed at once, became quiet and steady. “I know, honey. I know it’s bad. But you’re not alone now. I’ll take care of you.”

The water was turned off, and his strong hands were on her, helping her out of the tub. She stood dripping on the mat, her eyes still closed while tears tracked down her cheeks.

“You’re soaked,” he said, still in that soothing, rock steady tone. “Let’s get these clothes off—”

“No,” she managed, the word strangled.

“You can’t keep them on.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded.

“Okay. Just open your eyes for me, honey, and tell me that you can manage, and I’ll get some dry clothes for you and leave you to it. But I want to see those eyes before I do.”

She swallowed, and took two deep breaths to control the tears. When she thought she could handle it, she forced herself to open her eyes and look up at him. “I can do it.”

His gaze was piercing as he studied her, then he gave a short nod. “I’ll get your clothes. Tell me what you want.”

She tried to think, but nothing came to mind. “I don’t care. Anything.”

“Anything,” left to his decision, was a pair of panties and her cotton robe. While he waited outside, she stripped off her wet clothes, clumsily dried herself, then dressed in what he had provided. She was rubbing her wet hair with a towel when he decided she had had enough time, and opened the door again.

“Here, I’ll do it,” he said, taking the towel from her and putting down the lid on the toilet for her to sit down. She did, and he carefully blotted all the excess water from her hair, then took the comb and smoothed out all the tangles. She sat there like a child, letting him minister to her, and the small attentions gave her a comfort she’d never had before. Numbly she realized that what he’d said was true: She wasn’t alone this time. Dane was with her. He had been there last night, and he was still there, taking care of her, lending her his strength when she had none.

“What time is it?” she finally asked. Mundane thing, but the small and unimportant were the anchors of life, the constants that held one steady.

“Almost one. You need to eat; come on in the kitchen and I’ll put on a pot of fresh coffee, then fix breakfast for you.”

She remembered his coffee. She gave him an appalled look. “I can do the coffee.”

He accepted the rejection of his coffee with good grace, being used to it. She was coming out of it; she could say anything she wanted about his coffee. She was more alert, though her face was utterly colorless, except for the shadows under her eyes, and tight with strain. He put his arm around her waist to support her as they slowly made their way to the kitchen.

She leaned against the cabinet while she made coffee, then sat and watched Dane competently assemble a meal of toast, bacon, and a scrambled egg. She ate a couple of bites of egg and bacon, and one slice of toast. Dane ate the rest.

When she crumpled, without a word he scooped her onto his lap and held her while she cried.

Trammell arrived about four that afternoon, driving a pickup truck he had borrowed, with the replacement door in the truck bed. Dane paused for a moment to savor the incongruity of Trammell driving a truck, then went out to help him unload the door. “Whose truck is it?” he asked.

“Freddie’s husband’s.” They each grabbed one side of the door and slid it off the bed. They didn’t have to ask if anything had been reported; if it had, they both would have heard. Next door, Lou came out on her porch to watch them with open and suspicious interest. Dane took the time to wave to her. She waved back, but frowned disapprovingly. No doubt she had looked out her window first thing this morning and seen his car in Marlie’s driveway; he had undoubtedly besmirched Marlie’s spotless reputation.

“New lady friend?” he inquired delicately as they carried the door to the porch.

“Um, no.” Trammell was being unusually reticent, and Dane was instantly suspicious. It wasn’t that Trammell was the kind of guy who regaled the squad room with play-by-play details of a hot night, but he was usually forthcoming enough to at least give the lady a name.

“I thought the date was called off.”

Trammell cleared his throat. “She came over anyway.”

“Anything I should know about?”

“No. Maybe. But not yet.”

Dane didn’t get to be such a good detective by being stupid. He wondered why Trammell would feel it necessary to protect a woman’s identity, and only two possibilities presented themselves. One: The lady was married. Trammell wasn’t a poacher, though; married women were off limits to him. Two: The lady was a cop. That made sense; it fit. Immediately he began running through names and faces, trying to match them to the voice he’d heard last night. Everything clicked into place like three cherries in a slot machine. Ash blond hair sternly subdued to fit under her patrolman’s cap, a rather austere face, quiet brown eyes. Not beautiful, but deep. She wouldn’t enjoy being the butt of the raucous gossip that squad rooms specialized in, and she wasn’t the kind of woman to be trifled with. “Grace Roeg,” he said.

“Goddammit!” Trammell dropped his end of the door to the porch with a thump, and glared at him. Dane set his end down with less force. “I’m good,” he said, shrugging. “What can I say?”

“Nothing. Make sure you say absolutely nothing.”

“No problem, but you’re really getting in deep with me. That’s two secrets I have to keep.”

“God. All right. If you feel the need to blab about something, if you just can’t stand the pressure, then tell them about the beer. I can live with that. But keep Grace out of it.”

“Like I said, no problem. I like her; she’s a good cop. I’d spill the beans on
you,
but I wouldn’t upset
her
for anything. Watch yourself, though, pal. You could be asking for major trouble. You outrank her.”

“There’s no question of sexual harassment.”

“Maybe not to you, maybe not to her, but the paper pushers may not look at it that way.‘” Though the concern was a legitimate one, Dane was enjoying himself immense-ly. Trammell was glaring at him, black eyes as hot as coals. It was nice to get back at him, after the way he’d silently laughed at Dane’s predicament with Marlie. “How long has it been going on?” Not long, he’d bet. He’d have noticed it before now.

“A couple of days,” Trammell said grumpily.

“Moving a little fast there, partner.”

Trammell started to say something, shut his mouth, then mumbled, “
I’m
not.”

Dane started laughing at the helplessness in Trammell’s tone. He knew exactly how it felt. “Another good man bites the dust.”

“No! It’s not that serious.”

“Keep telling yourself that, buddy. It might keep you from panicking on the way to the church.”

“Damn it, it isn’t like that. It’s—”

“Just an affair?” Dane inquired with lifted brows. “A good time in bed? It doesn’t mean anything?”

Trammell looked hunted. “No, it’s… ah, shit. But no wedding bells. I don’t want to get married. I have no intention of getting married.”

“Okay, I believe you. But it’ll hurt my feelings if I’m not your best man.” Smiling at Trammell’s frustrated curse, Dane went inside to get a screwdriver, and Trammell followed him. Marlie was lying curled on the couch, asleep. Dane paused to look down at her and tuck the light coverlet around her feet. She looked small and pale, utterly defense-less as her mind recovered from the devastating exhaustion. Trammell was watching Dane’s face rather than looking at Marlie. “You have it bad yourself, partner,”

he said softly.

“Yeah,” Dane murmured. “I do.” So bad he was never going to recover.

“I thought it was just a case of the hots, but it’s more than that.”

“Afraid so.”

“Wedding bells for you?”

“Maybe.” He smiled crookedly. “I’m still not her favorite person, so I’ll have to work on that. And we have a killer to catch.”

He continued on into the kitchen, where he went through the cabinet drawers in search of a screwdriver. All kitchens, in his experience, contained a junk drawer, and that was the most likely place to find a screwdriver since he couldn’t imagine Marlie having an actual toolbox.
Her
junk drawer, bless her neat little heart, was more organized than his flatware, and lying there in its own clear plastic holder was a set of screwdrivers. He could picture her carefully selecting the appropriate tool, using it, then sliding it back into its place in the holder, never getting them out of the order they’d been in when she’d bought them. He took the entire pack, and the small hammer lying there.

She woke as he used the hammer to tap the pin out of the second hinge, sitting up on the sofa and pushing the heavy curtain of her hair out of her face. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, her expression still showing the remoteness of mingled fatigue and shock. Dane gave her an assessing glance and decided to let her have a moment to herself. She sat quietly, watching with only mild interest as they re-moved the damaged door and replaced it with the new one.

It wasn’t until they were finished that she said bemusedly, “Why did you change my door?”

“The other one was damaged,” Dane explained briefly as he gathered up the tools.

“Damaged?” She frowned. “How?”

“I kicked it in last night.”

She sat very still, slowly reconstructing the memories, putting details into place. “After I called you?”

“Yes.”

There was another pause. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I didn’t intend to worry you.”

“Worry” wasn’t quite how Dane would have described it. He had been in a gut-twisting panic.

“Do you remember my partner, Alex Trammell?”

“Yes. Hello, Detective. Thank you for helping replace my door.”

“My pleasure.” Trammell’s voice was more gentle than usual. It was obvious that Marlie was still struggling to get things together.

“Have you heard anything yet?” she asked.

He and Trammell exchanged a quick look. “No,” he finally said.

A faraway look drifted into her eyes. “She’s just lying there. Her family doesn’t know, her friends don’t know. They’re going about their routine, happy and oblivious, and she’s lying there waiting to be found. Why doesn’t someone call or go by, just to check on her?”

Dane felt uncomfortable, and Trammell did, too, restless-ly shifting position. They were more objective about bodies, especially bodies that might not even exist. They saw so many of them that they were hardened, for the most part thinking of the bodies as victims but not as individuals. The possibility of another murder victim had them both wor-ried, because of the implication of a serial killer on the loose in Orlando. For Marlie, however, it was personal. She didn’t have that inner wall to protect her.

“There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “Unless you can give us a name or a location, we have nothing to go on, nowhere to look. If it happened, someone will eventually find her. All we can do is wait.”

Her smile was bitter, and not really a smile. “It happened. It’s never
not
happened.”

He sat down beside her. Trammell took a chair. “Can you think of any details, something you didn’t tell me last night? Not about the killing, but about the location. Could you see anything that might give us a clue? Is it a house or an apartment?”

“A house,” she said instantly.

“A nice-looking house, or a slum?”

“Very neat, good furnishings. One of those larger-screen televisions, on a pedestal.” She frowned, rubbing her fore-head as if she had a headache. Dane waited. “Cypress.”

“Cypress? There’s a cypress tree out front, a park with cypress trees, what?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t really see it. He just
thought
it.”

“That’s a big help,” Dane muttered.

“What did you expect?” she snapped. “That he’d think, ‘Now I’m breaking into this house at so-and-so number on so-and-so street, where I’m going to rape and kill Jane Doe?’
Nobody
thinks like that, everything’s more automatic and subconscious. And I’m not telepathic anyway.”

“Then how did you pick up on a cypress tree?”

“I don’t know. It was just an impression. This guy is an unbelievably strong broadcaster,” she said, trying to ex-plain. “He’s like a super powerful radio station, overriding all the other signals.”

“Can you pick him up now?” Trammell interjected, his eyes bright with interest.

“I can’t pick up
anything
now. I’m too tired. And he probably isn’t broadcasting.”

“Explain,” Dane said briefly.