Dream Man (38 page)

Beverly said, “How are you going to keep the reporters away? The guy can’t get to me if a hundred reporters and photographers are camped on the front yard.”

“The television station is going to play it as a joke. The department will take a lot of heat for it, and the chief is going to say they’ve investigated Marlie and there isn’t anything to her claims. But the killer will know the truth, and he’ll come after her.” He paused. “Are you sure you want to do this, Bev?”

“I’m sure. I’m closest to her in size and coloring, and I’ve had advanced self-defense training. I’m the best choice.” Her voice was philosophical. Dane wasn’t fooled; Beverly had the reputation of being a tiger. She was chomping at the bit to be in on the stakeout, even though she knew she would have to let the killer get far too close for comfort, so they would have enough on him to make the charges stick.

“Okay.” He cast a harried glance toward the bedroom. “She’s refusing to go to a safe house.”

“We already have it set up,” Trammell said.

“Tell it to her. She’s agreed to leave, but she says she’s going to stay in a motel, or rent an apartment. She’s so mad at me that she won’t go along with anything I suggest.”

“I’ve got an idea. Maybe she’ll listen to me.”

“Give it a try.”

Marlie looked up from the bags she was packing when Trammell sauntered lazily into the bedroom. Grace was helping, taking garments out of the closet and placing them on the bed for Marlie to fold and pack in the suitcases. Dane leaned against the doorway, his face like a thundercloud as he watched her.

“Dane says you don’t want to go to a safe house,‘’ Trammell began.

“That’s right.”

Grace gave her a quick, concerned look. “Marlie, it’s the best place for you.”

“Would you like being confined, possibly for weeks? It would drive me crazy. I’ve done whatever I can to help, and I refuse to be punished for it.”

“But it isn’t punishment,” Grace tried to explain. “It’s to keep you safe.”

“The best judge of whether or not something is punish-ment is the one on the receiving end,” Marlie replied. “I don’t mind being secluded; I even like it. But I can’t bear being confined.”

“A motel won’t be very comfortable,” Trammell said. “I have an idea. You’ll still need protection, so why don’t you move into Dane’s house? I’ve finished with the renovations, and got the furniture delivered yesterday. That way you’ll be more comfortable, and he’ll be with you at night.”

She gave him an icy glare. “That’s
not
a very good suggestion.”

“It’s the only workable solution.” Trammell countered her glare with a gentle smile. “I know it isn’t ideal, but it’s a compromise that will work, if you’ll let it. Dane won’t take you into protective custody, but I can tell you right now that the chief will order it and not blink an eye.”

Frustrated fury welled up in her, almost choking her. She didn’t want to stay in Dane’s house, didn’t want to be forced into intimacy with him. But Trammell, unfortunately, was right; the chief didn’t know her, and wouldn’t think twice about ordering her detained, for her own good.

“Trammell’s wrong,” Dane said softly, breaking into the silence. He met her angry gaze without blinking.

“I
will
take you into custody. You might hate my guts for it, but I’ll do it if I have to. It’s better than risking your life. So, honey, it’s my house or jail.”

Stated like that, she accepted that she had no choice. The move was swiftly accomplished. Marlie took the time to thank Beverly for the risk she was taking, and to show her around the house, then she was hustled out. She insisted on taking her car, so it was a caravan of three that parked at Dane’s house not long afterward.

Dane had seen the completed changes Trammell had wrought in his house, and considered the money well spent. The new furniture was both comfortable and chic; his living room now felt like a patio, with the same sense of freshness and space. His bed was the one thing in the house that had been fairly new; he’d replaced his grandparents’ standard double with a king-size when he inherited the house. The only reason he had endured the double bed at Marlie’s these past weeks was the fact that she had been in it. For that, he had been content to have his feet hang off the end.

If he had had any hope of sharing that big bed with her now, it disappeared when she resolutely carried her clothes into the second bedroom, which had also received Trammell’s sprucing up. Still he was fiercely elated. She was here; that was what mattered. She obviously wanted to make a complete break with him, but circumstances had conspired against her, and she was forced to stay with him. He would have the chance to break down that wall of anger.

Again Grace helped Marlie with her clothes. They worked quietly together for several minutes before Grace said, “You’re really angry at him, aren’t you?”

“Anger doesn’t begin to describe it. Not only did he set me up, that was his reason from the beginning for getting involved with me.”

Grace looked shocked. “That can’t be so!”

“Can’t it? He didn’t deny planning it before he moved in with me.”

“But Alex has been positively gleeful because Dane is so obviously crazy about you. Surely you know that he loves you!”

“If he does, he’s never even come close to saying it. In fact, we’ve never discussed our relationship at all, except for sex. I’m beginning to think that’s all it ever was, just sex. He had this plan of his, and as a side benefit I happened to be acceptable in bed.”

Grace thought about it. “You’ve never talked about your feelings at all?”

“Not one word. I called him when a vision started, he came over and took care of me, and simply never left. The next thing I knew, he was hanging up his clothes in my closet.”

“I see. Even on our first date, Alex admitted that emotion-ally he was in deep water,” Grace murmured.

“And Alex is the most skittish man in the world.” She thought about it some more, then pronounced:

“You’re right. On the evi-dence, you have to assume that Dane deliberately became involved with you to gain your trust, and moved in with you to stay close to the action, so to speak.”

“In a nutshell, he used me.”

When Grace left the bedroom, she gave Dane a frosty glare. Trammell caught his partner’s eye and shrugged in amusement. Dane didn’t think it was a damn bit funny. He didn’t protest when they left; the sooner he and Marlie were alone, the sooner he could begin mending fences. God, what if he couldn’t change her mind?

At the thought of losing her forever, he felt a cold knot of panic form in the pit of his stomach. Marlie finally came out of the bedroom to watch the local evening news. As she had expected, she was the lead story.

“WVTM learned today that the Orlando Police Depart-ment has been using the services of a local psychic, Marlie Keen, to aid them in their search for the Orlando Slasher. WVTM reporter Cheri Vaughn talked to Ms. Keen earlier today, when she and a city detective were seen leaving the house of the latest victim, Marilyn Elrod, who lived in Wildwood Estates.”

The picture switched from the studio to the tape shot earlier. Marlie watched in silence for a minute, then said, “You played it perfectly. The way you told them to leave, and kept stepping in front of me, looked exactly as if you were trying to keep me under wraps. Do you think I came across as a publicity-hungry kook?”

“Not quite,” he muttered. At least she was talking to him. He had been worried that she would give him the silent treatment for the rest of his life. No, she hadn’t come across as a kook, at least not to anyone with an ounce of percep-tion. There had been too much controlled anger in her face, too much disgust when she had described the killer.

The next scene featured Lieutenant Bonness, sweating in the heat, looking properly embarrassed. Dane had briefed him on how to play it. Bonness wasn’t comfortable with what he was doing, but his discomfort fit in with what he wanted to project. Yes, Marlie Keen had contacted them. They were willing to listen to anyone who might be able to help them with the investigation. Ms. Keen’s allegations hadn’t panned out, though, and the Orlando PD would no longer be working with her. Back to the studio. The evening anchors had a few pithy remarks to make about the police department wasting tax dollars chasing down wild ideas from the loony fringe. The spot ended with the information that Ms. Keen, the alleged psychic, worked in the accounting department of a local bank, and named the bank.

“There goes my job,” Marlie drawled.

Dane’s hand tightened on the can of beer he was holding. “I told you—”

“I know what you told me. I also know you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His teeth ground together. “For the last time, I didn’t get involved with you just to set you up as bait.”

“No? Just exactly when did you come up with this brilliant plan? And I’m not being sarcastic. It’s a damn good idea. It’ll probably work. But when did you think of it?”

He didn’t have to think, he knew exactly when the plan had occurred to him. Again he chose not to lie.

“On the plane coming back from Denver.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “You mean right before you came to my house and made a heavy-duty pass?”

“Yes,” he growled.

“The timing’s a mite suspicious, isn’t it?”

“I wanted you before that, damn it!” he yelled. “But you were a suspect, and I couldn’t get involved with you. As soon as I cleared you of all suspicion, I was knocking on your door.”

She smiled. “And it was just pure luck that I could be used in this way, wasn’t it? I don’t mind that part of it, Dane, I really don’t. What I hate is the way you used a personal relationship to set it up—though it wasn’t very personal for you, was it?”

Red mist swam in front of his eyes. He was so angry that he could feel himself losing control. He got up and walked out of the house, to keep himself from doing something he would regret later. Damn, this wasn’t looking good at all. How could she doubt what they’d had together? He’d never felt like this about any other woman, and she thought it meant less than nothing to him. He walked around the yard, the lingering evening heat making him sweat. When he thought he had himself under control, he went back inside, but Marlie had gone back into the bedroom.

Probably that was for the best. Both their emotions were too raw for them to talk about this sensibly. Tomorrow, when they both had calmed down, would be better.

Carroll Janes watched the evening news telecast. So that was how they had known! A damn psychic. Whoever would have thought? That certainly wasn’t something for which he could have planned. The cops didn’t seem to have much faith in her, but just looking at her had given him chills. And what she had said; how could she have been so vicious? She had called him a worm and a coward. After a moment of hurt, he began to get angry. So he wasn’t anyone’s dream man, was he? What did that little bitch know?

Actually, he realized, she knew quite a lot. The cops didn’t believe her—for now—but the fact was, she was a real danger to him. As no one else had, she had gotten close to him. The only way she could have seen him was in a psychic vision, and the thought made him feel maddeningly vulnerable. It was intolerable. How ignominious it would be for his downfall to come about because of some kook psychic! The trouble was that she
wasn’t
a kook. She was for real. It was the only way she could know what he looked like.

He wasn’t safe as long as she lived.

The solution was obvious. The psychic would have to die.

Janes called in sick the next morning. Marlie Keen had been listed in the phone book, and he had looked up her address on a city map. He didn’t have any time to waste; he had to get rid of her as soon as possible. And then perhaps he would think about leaving Orlando; he usually remained in an area longer than this, but the psychic bitch had loused things up for him here. They had that sketch of him. They might discount it now, but when the bitch turned up dead, they would give it a lot more credence. He smelled setup, but he didn’t dare ignore the situation. It was simply too dangerous for him. But he didn’t take any chances; he switched license plates with a car belonging to an old lady in the apartment building who seldom drove anymore. He would switch them back when he returned, so that if any suspicious cop was watching the traffic on Marlie Keen’s street, when they traced that tag, it would come back as belonging to a Mrs. Velma Fisher, whose car was nothing like the one that had been sporting the plate. But when they checked Mrs. Fisher’s car, the license plate would be there, convincing them that they had made an error in writing down the number.

His blond curls were snugly in place when he set out. Such an extravagant head of hair was a brilliant disguise, if he did say so himself. They were looking for a bald guy. It was an ingenious way of changing his appearance, because either way, his head was what people noticed: They would look at the blond curls, and not the face beneath it, or, if he was seen during one of his nights, they would notice the slick skull and nothing else. Simply brilliant.

He rolled down his car window and turned up the radio. That was another piece of psychological subterfuge: Cops wouldn’t expect him to draw attention to himself with a loud radio. If this was a trap, they wouldn’t expect him to boldly drive by, where they could get a good look at him. That was why they never had been able to catch him. He could predict their actions and reactions, but they didn’t have a clue how his mind worked. After all, how could anyone without an imagination begin to understand what it was like to have one?

So he casually drove by the bitch’s house, and just as casually glanced at it. There was a car in the driveway, why wasn’t she working? The newscast had plainly said that she was employed at a bank. There seemed to be a lot of cars parked along the street. That chill went down his spine again. He didn’t actually see anything, but he hadn’t es-caped for so long by being stupid; quite the opposite. This definitely felt like a setup.

He didn’t risk another drive-by. He drove back to his apartment, switched the license plates again, and thought. If it was a setup, then the cops wouldn’t let the bitch stay at her house. They would have her salted away somewhere they thought was safe. It would be impossible for him to locate her, much less get at her.