Out of the Dark (20 page)

“Will do,” Luke said, and hurried back up the stairs.

The wounds on the backs of Johnny Newton’s hands had finally quit bleeding, but they still stung. When he got back to Mabel’s house, he would doctor them. Mabel had struck him as the kind of woman who would probably keep a well-stocked medicine cabinet.

As he drove through the streets of St. Louis, he thought back over the event. It wasn’t as satisfying a hit as he’d expected it to be, although the nurse had been a plus. He hadn’t known she would be there, and the high he always got from the power of ending a life had been more than satisfying. He’d expected more of the same from offing Raphael, but it hadn’t happened. Who could have known that someone that sick would be so defiant? Not only had he fought back, but he’d made such a goddamned mess. Johnny didn’t mind spilling blood, but he didn’t like it spilled on him. Still, it was over, and he had the satisfaction of knowing that the bastard had known what was happening. He was still a little puzzled over the way Raphael had kept smiling, even though he was bleeding all over the place, but the way he figured it, he’d actually done the guy a favor. Instead of lingering with cancer and all the pain and sickness that comes with it, Johnny had put him out of his misery.

A few minutes later, he turned up the driveway and parked in the Tyler garage as he’d done before. He headed for the back door as if he’d lived here all his life and was just walking inside when someone hailed him from behind.

“Hey, mister!”

Johnny froze.

“Mister! Hey, mister!”

He turned slowly, his hand on the gun beneath his jacket. When he saw a bare-chested young teenager standing beside a lawn mower and realized he’d been smelling the odor of freshly cut grass without even realizing it, he relaxed.

“Excuse me? Were you speaking to me?” Johnny asked.

The kid nodded. “I’m Kevin. I just finished mowing the yard, but Mrs. Tyler isn’t answering the door. She always pays me when I’m through.”

Johnny stifled a frown. “Yes, of course. If you’ll wait there, I’ll see where Aunt Mabel has gotten off to. She’s getting so hard of hearing these days that she probably didn’t hear the bell.”

“Sure, no problem,” the kid said, and ambled over to a bench beneath some shade trees to wait.

Then it dawned on Johnny that Mabel wasn’t going to be available to tell him how much was owed.

“Say, kid…how much does she owe you, anyway?”

“Forty bucks.”

Johnny dug his wallet out of his pocket. “How about I just pay you myself, then I won’t have to bug Aunt Mabel in case she’s taking a nap?”

“Yeah, sure,” Kevin said. “Wow, what happened to you?” he asked, as he took the money out of Johnny’s hands.

“What do you mean?” Johnny asked.

Kevin pointed to Johnny’s shirt and arms.

“You got blood all over you.”

“Oh that. Nosebleed,” Johnny said. “Happens a lot, thanks to a bad habit from my past.”

“What do you mean?”

“I used to be too fond of the white stuff.”

Kevin nodded, pretending that he understood, although Johnny could tell he was shocked.

“You know…nose candy,” Johnny added. “Let it be a lesson to you. Don’t snort the damned stuff. It fucks up more than your nose.”

“Yeah. Right,” Kevin said, as he pocketed the cash Johnny handed him and jogged back to his mower.

Johnny waited until the kid and his mower were out of sight; then he hurried inside. Locking the door behind him, he cursed all the way upstairs. He wasn’t in the habit of missing the details, but he should have known that an old woman like Mabel Tyler wouldn’t have done her own yard work. It reminded him that there might be other things he’d forgotten to take into account. The knowledge made him nervous. Maybe he didn’t have as much time to off Jade Cochrane as he’d planned.

Knowing that his visit with Mabel needed to come to a quick end, he stripped off his clothes as he strode down the hall, then headed for the shower to wash off the blood.

Later, as he was showering, the soap stung the scratches on his hands, reminding him of the other bungle that he’d made today. With an angry curse, he rinsed, dried, then quickly dressed. After retracing his steps down the stairs, he stopped off in the kitchen to get himself a snack, then grabbed his binoculars as he headed for his viewing window to see what was going on across the street.

He placed his plate of cold cuts and crackers on the table beside his chair, opened the can of pop that he’d filched from the refrigerator and took a big swig.

“Aaah,”
he said, burping loudly as the carbonated soft drink hit his empty stomach.

He put the binoculars to his eyes, adjusted them accordingly, then aimed them toward Sam Cochrane’s house just in time to see a pair of city police cruisers pulling into the driveway. He arched an eyebrow, then, without taking the binoculars away from his face, felt for the plate of cold cuts and got himself a bite. He chewed quietly with his mouth closed as his mother had taught him to do. When another car pulled in behind the patrol cars, he turned the binoculars to the license tag.

HEADDR.

It took him a few seconds to decipher it; then he realized that the latest arrival was a shrink. He grinned, laid the binoculars in his lap, and picked up the plate and polished off the rest of the meat and crackers.

“I guess somebody got a little spooked by her boyfriend’s recent demise. What a pity.”

He downed the rest of his pop, then crunched the empty can between his hands before tossing it into the ornamental urn in the corner of the room.

“Two points!” he shouted when the can dropped inside, then laid the binoculars on the floor and carried his dirty plate into the kitchen.

Finished with doing the dishes, he searched through the various bathrooms until he found some antiseptic cream and small bandages. Once he’d doctored the deep scratches on his hands and covered them up, he was in a much better mood. His belly was full, his wounds no longer causing him pain, and he was more than halfway through with the job he’d come to do.

Tonight he would find a way into the Cochrane house. It gave him a hard-on just thinking about the risks of walking into the enemy’s camp and taking out the woman without detection. This was what had been missing over the last few years. The risks. He’d gotten too damned good at what he did, and it had taken all the fun out of killing. Shooting Jade Cochrane from a hidden location and with a rifle fixed with a telescopic sight would be as boring as white bread. But entering her house, walking in the same places she walked, breathing the same air, touching the same things, then killing her in her own bed while her family slept only a short distance away, was a high he could only imagine. For Johnny, it was crossing a line from professionalism to personal pleasure.

He could hardly wait.

Earl Walters had been a street cop the year Jade Cochrane disappeared. Now, pushing thirty years on the job, he was the chief of police for the St. Louis Police Department and a personal friend of Sam Cochrane’s. Like everyone else in the city who remembered the desperation of a young father trying to find his family, he had rejoiced at Jade Cochrane’s return. He didn’t know the particulars of the man who’d come with her, but it hadn’t mattered. The little girl who’d been lost had come home.

But today he was outraged by the murders that had taken place in the hospital. That some son-of-a-bitch could waltz into a ward that was off limits to the general public, then commit such heinous crimes without being seen, was not to be tolerated. The mayor was on his ass, and the phones on his desk hadn’t stopped ringing since the bodies had been discovered. As if that wasn’t enough, the incident had caused a new feeding frenzy for the media. Speculation was high as to why someone attached to the prodigal daughter would have been murdered. Gossip abounded as to what they must have done in their past that would have made someone kill. Knowing Sam Cochrane the way he did, this was going to be touchy business, which was why he’d come out from behind his desk to ask the questions himself.

Velma was at her wits’ end and had abdicated answering the door for her duties in the kitchen. Luke had made a call to his office, and thirty minutes later two very large, very determined men were stationed at both entrances to Sam’s house, along with guards at the driveway leading up to the house and at the back gates. Now that they were confident no intruders could get through their defenses, all they had to do was ignore the phones, which meant they were also ignoring calls from the police, which accounted for the reason two city police cars were parked on their front lawn and Earl Walters was ringing their doorbell.

Earl ambled up to the front door and rang the bell. A very large man with a big head and no neck opened the door and basically told Earl to get lost, at which point Earl flashed his identification and told the man to go get Sam.

Earl waited in the foyer. He didn’t have long to wait.

Sam came down the stairs in a hurry.

“Earl! I expected the police, but not you. You’ve been riding that desk for so long I didn’t know you still knew how to dismount.”

Earl grinned. The references to his being more cowboy than cop was an old joke between them. “Wish I could say this was a personal visit, but we both know it’s not. We need to talk.”

“Of course,” Sam said. “Library okay?”

“Can your daughter join us?”

Sam’s expression darkened. “Right now my daughter is debating as to whether she’s still willing to join the human race.”

“Damn. I’m sorry,” Earl said. “But it’s important. Will you let me try to talk to her?”

Sam shrugged. “There’s a doctor with her now. If she says it’s okay, then you can try.”

“Thanks,” Earl said. “Lead the way.”

Sam went back up the stairs, with Earl right behind him. As they neared the second floor, Earl could hear someone crying. His stomach knotted. Now he remembered why he’d wanted off the streets and behind a desk. He hated facing the families of victims of crime.

Trying to regain some composure, he swiped a hand across his face and then popped a couple of breath mints in his mouth. The sobbing was louder now. He patted the pocket of his jacket, then cursed beneath his breath when he discovered he’d forgotten to get a handkerchief this morning. Already, beads of sweat were forming on his upper lip, a sure sign of anxiety.

“She’s in here,” Sam said. “Luke’s with her.”

Earl frowned. “Luke Kelly of Kelly Securities?”

“The same.”

“He’s the guy you hired to find her, right?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Sam said.

“Still on the payroll, I see. So what are you and those guys outside protecting her from?”

Sam turned around. The congenial expression on his face was gone.

“The goddamned television crews…the reporters who won’t take no for an answer. You name it. We haven’t been able to show our faces in public without causing a stir.”

Earl flushed. Sam was defensive. He should have expected it.

“Sorry. But we’re trying to find a reason for the murders. She’s the logical place to start.”

“You’re sure that the killer was after Raphael and not the nurse? Maybe Raphael was just a witness who the killer needed to shut up. Did you check that angle?”

Earl frowned. “You know we did, and I can promise you that the man was the target.”

“How do you know that?” Sam snapped.

“Because the woman’s kill was neat, quick and quiet. Raphael was all doped up. He wouldn’t even have known she was dead if the killer had walked out then. But his death was brutal. He fought back. We have DNA beneath his fingernails, hemorrhaging beneath the skin and in his eyes. He was strangled, and it was not an easy way to die. He was the target.”

“Oh Lord,” Sam whispered, then laid the flat of his hand on the door to Jade’s room, as if holding off the hell that had followed her here. Then he looked at Earl. “Don’t tell her the details. She can’t know. Not now. Maybe never.”

Earl nodded.

Sam opened the door.

Earl saw a slim, dark-haired woman curled into fetal position in the middle of the bed. The man at the window was nothing but a dark silhouette against the sunlight until he moved. Earl recognized Luke Kelly.

“What’s he doing here?” Luke asked.

“He wants to talk to Jade.”

Luke lowered his voice. “Are you crazy? She’s in no shape to talk to anyone.”

“Look, the sooner I can get some answers, the better off we’ll all be. Right now, we don’t have anything except a faint image of some guy in a lab coat who nobody knows, walking down a hall toward the isolation ward.”

Luke shook his head. “That’s not true. You’ve got my car. Check underneath for fingerprints.”

Earl frowned. “What do you mean?”

“They had a wreck at the same time the incident was happening at the hospital,” Sam said.

“So what’s one got to do with the other?” Earl asked.

“I think someone messed with my brakes. Whether it was just to slow us down or in the hope of killing Jade, too, I don’t know.”