If Looks Could Kill (28 page)

"He... they were helping to keep an eye on Miss Jackson," Mac explained. "I think it would be advisable for you to hold off town watching for a little while, Allen. I'd hate for somebody to mistake you for the murderer."

"I'm perfectly capable, sir—"

Mac didn't have any patience left. With an upraised hand, he cut the man off. "Allen. I have to get in and work on this with Miss Jackson. Now, I'd appreciate it if you'd head on home... and ditch the handcuffs."

"Weird Allen with handcuffs," Chris moaned a couple of minutes later as they were turning on lights and heading for Mac's office. "Now, there's a scary thought."

"What
was
Victor doing outside your house this morning?"

Chris busied herself starting a new pot of coffee. Mac could see the fine tremor in her hands. "Victor worries about me," she said in an offhand voice. "He also seems to find it quite romantic to pine from afar."

"Would he kill for you?"

That spun her right around, her eyes stark, her face as pale as he'd seen it. "Victor?" she demanded. "Don't be silly. He doesn't have the guts to stand up to his mother, and she's been dead for five years. Just how well do you think he's going to do against Cooter?"

Mac threw off an easy shrug. "I once had a ninety-pound woman rip her two-hundred-pound boyfriend's throat out with her bare hands when voices told her he was possessed."

"Well, what about old Allen?" Chris challenged. "From what I've read about serial killers over the years, they tend to be real knowledgeable about the law. Some of them impersonated police to get information on the murder investigations."

Mac put a David Sanborne tape into the player and turned it on. Then he closed the blinds against the rest of the town and pulled out his notes. "We're going to consider Allen. And Victor, and your agent who likes to wear things home with the price tags still on them, and your romance editor who doesn't know you write mysteries."

Chris was still out in the front room where the coffeemaker was making noises like a choking retriever. "Couldn't it just be some crazy person who thinks he knows me?"

Mac looked at her through the doorway, all angles and funny grace, like a wading bird caught in a trap. He wanted to tell her it was going to be all right. He wanted to call Danny back in Chicago and tell him to stop the trace he was doing on the life and times of Chris Jackson. He wanted, most of all, to know who was doing this to her and why, and what there was about her that was making it so much worse.

"It could be," he admitted. "That's St. Louis's problem. Ours is to make sure you don't open the door on a familiar face and end up in a body bag."

Still she hesitated, caught between the dread of something big and the frustration of what she was going to have to do to people who trusted her. Age-old dilemmas, Mac thought to himself as he sat himself down, the dark threnody of a saxophone wrapping around his shoulders. Somebody had to be offered up all the time. The answers were never the ones you wanted, even for somebody as objective as a cop.

But the answers were all that mattered. Even if that long, quirky bird might never find its way back to the water.

Mac picked up his paperweight and began to balance it in his hands.

"Let's go over the list," Chris finally said, sagging just a little and turning to pour them both some coffee.

Mac uncapped his pen and set to work.

* * *

"That's it?" he asked some time later as he looked down at the notes he'd made. "Eight people from your stint in St. Louis, four people each from the publishing houses, your agent, and the townspeople. Doesn't seem like much."

"You'll need to talk to the publishing house to find out who's actually handled the manuscript," Chris said. "Those are only the people I deal with."

He was nodding, thinking. "And none of them have ever expressed a working knowledge of the St. Louis area?"

Her grin was wry. "When I sent the first book in, I had to explain to the copy editor that the arch here wasn't just another McDonald's. In the east, St. Louis is looked upon as that green wrinkly area under the left wing of the plane on the way to the other coast. Most of them couldn't put it on the correct side of the Mississippi."

"You didn't work with anybody else in St. Louis?"

"Sure. But these are the only ones I hung around with. Anybody else was just a passing acquaintance."

Mac looked up at her, relieved that away from her house she'd seemed to relocate a little of her spark. It made him wonder just what she'd been looking for the night before. "That doesn't mean one of them couldn't be the killer," he suggested.

She nodded her concession. "It means I can't give you anything helpful. I worked at least three jobs at a time to pay for school, and I took classes with about sixteen thousand other people. But the only people I really got to know were at DFS."

Mac conceded the point in return. "Boyfriends?" he asked. "Ex-spouses? Anything like that?"

He'd almost expected to get a flash of anger on that one. Instead he got a grin. "The first two names in St. Louis," Chris admitted. "The first one's a cop and the second one's a C.P.A."

"You do like variety. Did you leave on good terms?"

"The best. They both found women who wanted to settle down and I sent flatware."

"So you've never been married?"

"Not even unhappily."

"How about any of your foster families growing up?" Mac asked, still not content with the length of that list for the years it should have covered.

There went her humor again. "They don't even know I'm alive," she said simply, coldly. "There wouldn't be any connection."

"You're sure."

This time, Chris looked at him, and Mac saw the ashes of a childhood. "I'm sure."

He just nodded and made his own mental note to have Danny check on it once he got something. "OK," he said. "Nobody else you want to add to the list?"

He'd said it casually enough, leaning back in his chair with his attention ostensibly on the tarantula Kevin had sent him from Phoenix. Big, ugly, hairy thing. The truth caught suspended in a protective bubble of careful and not-so-careful lies. Mac waited, listening to Chris's stillness, smelling her indecision. Holding his breath for a breakthrough.

Instead, she shook her head. "Those are the only ones I can remember. Now, what do we do?"

Mac shrugged, disappointed again. "Focus on the people who might have somehow had access to this latest book." He looked hard at her, assessing, challenging. Nailing her in place. "I need an honest answer. Is there any name on that list that sounds more promising than another?"

She froze, eyes on the paperwork, body perfectly still. Mac could see the instinctive defenses charge in. Saw her struggle with them to give him an answer. Wondered just what was way at the back of those brittle brown eyes.

Finally, though, she had the guts to face him. "There's something," she admitted. "A feeling."

He made it a point not to move. "Yeah?"

She let out a very small sigh. Then she shook her head. "I don't know how to explain it. Something... something about this is real familiar. Personal. It's not just somebody making a point to the world. They're making it specifically to me."

"What point?"

Her eyes grew even larger, bright as if she were actually fighting tears. "I don't know. I just... I think somehow I've heard the person tell me what they're trying to say in person. I just don't know who. I don't know when."

"A face?" he asked. "Anything? Man or woman?"

Chris shook her head again, her motion more agitated. "I don't know. I don't have the world's best memory, and it's just not helping me right now."

"But it's someone you know."

"More than that," she countered. "It's someone who knows me."

That was when Mac let himself sit forward, when he allowed Chris to see his attention. "Which means we can lop off a few names from the list and concentrate on the rest."

"How?"

He considered the pile of folders. "God, what I'd give for a computer link. To get anything this way, we're going to have to wait for Lawson or call Cape and use theirs. And I hate doing that. By the time I get off the phone everybody in town'll know who we suspect."

"What computers?" Chris asked, the change of direction reflecting in her mannerisms. "VICAP, NCIC, MULES, that kind of thing?"

Mac nodded. "It was a hell of a lot easier back in Chicago. All I needed was the time and a couple of warm bodies."

He didn't even notice the sly expression creep across her face. "I can help."

Mac looked up, surprised to see interest in her eyes. "What?"

She motioned to the pile of information between them. "The computers. VICAP, NCIC, MULES, LETS, all the law enforcement networks. And a lot of others, like credit check places. I can tap into them from my computer at home."

This time it was Mac who was surprised into silence. "I hope you know that's completely illegal."

Chris grinned like a kid caught swimming in the wrong pool. "I figure you won't rat on me as long as we can get the information. I learned how to do it a couple of months ago. Amazing what a couple of mai tais'll do for a computer hacker."

"A book, no doubt."

"The one I'm working on now. Of course, I won't divulge state secrets, but do you know how easy it is to find out anything you want to know about someone just from his social security number?"

"Yes," Mac said. "I do."

"If I can get the portable, I can modem from your phone here," she said, then proffered a smile that was just shy of assured. "If you don't mind."

Mac didn't mind in the least. But he didn't get the chance to take her up on her offer. Once again, the phone interrupted.

First Mac cursed. Then he picked up the receiver.

"MacNamara," he snapped.

"Halleluia, somebody's home. This is Garavaglia, St. Louis County Police. Chief?"

Mac straightened his chair, already recognizing the clipped tones of his caller. Something was happening.

"You got me. What's up?"

There was a small sound, a short grunt of frustration. "What's up is we can't seem to find our sergeant. She never surfaced here after visiting you. When did you say she left?"

Mac was already pulling over his scratch pad. "Friday."

There was a short silence on the other end of the line. "Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Husband hasn't heard from her. Nobody's seen her. We already had the highway patrol check along Highway 55 all the way to Cape, and they've come up dry. She told some people here she was maybe thinking of driving down 21. Can you do some checking on your end? Chevy Cavalier four-door, license KRT-226."

"Yeah. I'll get the word out."

"You sure she left?" Garavaglia demanded. "She's not sneakin' around down there someplace trying to catch something?"

"Not that I know of. There are plenty of places to hide back up in the hills, but if she'd been talking to anybody, I'd know it. I'll check, though."

"Appreciate it. I'll be comin' on down your way tomorrow to talk to you, but till then, we're at a high rock wall without a rope. And all hell's breakin' loose."

Mac tapped at the files on his desk. "Some of the information panning out?"

"Yeah." Garavaglia couldn't have sounded more disgusted. "You were right about that rump rustler over in Webster. Missing his promise ring from his housemate. It didn't turn up at the time, because nobody knew he was wearing it. Nobody bothered to get worried until probate went through and they started splitting up the proceeds. Which means, you and Lawson were right. You missin' a ring from your DB down there?"

"He didn't wear 'em," Mac said, scribbling away. "I have the family checking for items he might have been carrying with him. Keys, mementos, good-luck charms, that kind of thing."

There was a long sigh. "Well, son, looks like we got a real Mr. Stranger Danger on our hands. Cap's tryin' to keep a lid on things up here, but we got a major cluster fuck brewin', especially with two suspects ready to go to trial. And that stupid bitch took every one of those case files with her. We got nothin' but air and a chief lookin' to relieve his indigestion in the worst way."

Mac considered the untidy pile of manila and Xerox paper on his desk. "Well, I might be able to help a little there, too."

He could hear the percussion of a detective bureau on the other end of that line, footsteps, voices, computers, radios. He could almost smell the burnt-away coffee in the pot and the raw scratch of disinfectant. It made him crave a cigarette like sex.

"I hear you have the author down there," Garavaglia was saying.

"Yep."

"I'll need to talk to her."

"As long as you're nicer than the last one."

The answering oath was succinct and heartfelt. "Six fuckin' months till retirement. Six months..."

It took Mac five minutes to put out the APB for the Chevy sedan Sergeant Lawson had been driving. When he was finished, he looked up to find Chris checking the files on the McClain case.