Superstition (18 page)

“Oh, God.” At the picture this conjured up, Nicky felt herself going all light-headed again. The thought of it was too awful . . . and then she remembered the killer touching her hair. She started to shake. The room seemed to tilt. Everything started slowly revolving around her. She closed her eyes in self-defense. Her head suddenly felt impossibly heavy, as if she had a boulder attached to the top of her neck, and she let it drop sideways to rest against the wing of the chair.

“You’ve been through hell tonight, haven’t you?” He sounded as if he was kicking himself for answering her question. He touched her cheek, his warm fingers sliding over the cool smooth surface of her skin, and she realized that he was brushing stray strands of her hair back from her face. “But it’s over, and you’re safe now. Take a few deep breaths and . . .”

The realization that suddenly burst in her mind like an explosion of fireworks had to be shared that instant. She opened her eyes. He was leaning in toward her, closer now.

Their gazes met, and his hand, which had been tucking her hair behind her ear, dropped away.

“It’s just like what happened to Tara Mitchell,” she gasped, appalled.

“Yeah,” he said, easing back on his heels so that he was no longer so close. “I know.”

“He’s back.” Her throat seemed to have constricted. She could hardly force the words out. “It’s the same guy. Oh my God.”

He stood up then, tucked his hands in the front pockets of his jeans, and looked down at her almost meditatively.

“Is it?”

“It has to be, don’t you see?” Her tone was urgent. She shifted positions so that she was sitting upright, her feet on the floor, leaning forward a little as she pointed out the obvious to him. “It’s the same house, the same M.O., the same everything.”

“Looks like it.”

“What do you mean, ‘looks like it’? It
is.
The program—maybe he saw the promos or something. Maybe he was out there in the dark the whole time, watching through the windows, waiting for his chance—” Nicky broke off with a shudder.

“That’s certainly one possible explanation.”

Nicky looked up at him with a frown. He was tall, so it was a long way up. If she’d been feeling stronger, she would have gotten to her feet just to lessen the height differential. There was something in his voice. . . .

“What other explanation could there be?”

He shrugged.

“A copycat? Is that what you’re thinking?”

“Could be.” A beat passed. “I understand from talking to some of your crew that your program is on the verge of being cancelled.”

“Maybe.” She hated to admit it aloud, even under such dire circumstances. “So what does—?” All of a sudden she saw where he was going with that. Her eyes widened. “You’re not suggesting—you don’t think—
nobody
would kill Karen and attack me just to jack up the
ratings.”

He shrugged again. “Probably not. It’s just something to look into.” He turned and moved back to the desk. After a glance at the tape recorder—Nicky presumed to make sure that it was still functioning—he perched on a corner of the desk, one leg swinging, and looked at her again. “Let me ask you a question: The screams at the end of the program—I’m assuming they were computer-generated, or something like that?”

Nicky frowned. She was still trying to get her mind around the idea that he could even for a moment consider that someone connected with
Twenty-four Hours Investigates
might have done it, much less for a rise of a couple points in the Nielsens.

“No.” Okay, time to be scrupulously honest here. “At least, not as far as I know.”

“But they were scripted, right? A planned part of the program?”

“No.”

Their gazes met.

“You’re saying the screams were not scripted?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, come on.” The skepticism in his voice was unmistakable. “You can tell me, you know. I’m a cop, and I’ve got no interest in the hows and whys of how TV shows are put together. Any information you give me won’t go any further than this room, I promise. But I need to know the truth for the sake of the investigation, so I’m going to ask you one more time: Were those screams part of the act?”

“Act?” As the implications of the word slowly but inexorably penetrated, Nicky stiffened. She could feel her strength returning, could feel the blood flowing through her veins again, could feel her skin warming. She wouldn’t have suspected it, but annoyance, she was discovering, was positively therapeutic.

“You know, your mother’s shtick.”

“My mother,” Nicky said with more than a hint of bite, “does not have any
shtick
.”

He looked impatient. “Whatever you want to call it then. The question I’m asking you is this: What was the source of those screams?”

“Did you ever think it might be . . . a ghost?” Nicky wasn’t convinced of it herself, but he was so obviously incredulous that she couldn’t resist.

“No,” he said. “I never did.”

“Maybe you should open your mind a little and consider it, then.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. There was a wry twist to his mouth now. “Hey, I’m a cop. If my choice here is to believe that those screams came from a ghost or from some other source, I’m going to have to go with the other source every time.”

“That’s your prerogative.” Nicky smiled. It wasn’t a particularly nice smile. A great deal of her life had been spent listening to people snicker when they found out who her mother was and what she did. She no longer had much patience for it. “All I can tell you is, the screams weren’t scripted. I have no more idea where they came from than you do. Tara Mitchell’s ghost is the best I can do.”

“Right.”

The nasty-cop sneer was back, and Nicky found herself disliking him all over again.

“Is there anything else?” she asked, gathering herself together in preparation for standing up and ending the encounter. “Because I’m really very tired.”

It was the truth. Her head throbbed, her body ached, and her poor sore heart was in even worse shape than all the rest. And she was so exhausted that she felt practically boneless. All she wanted to do now was crawl into bed and try to sleep until it was time to get up and go to the airport. The question was, though, what would she see when she closed her eyes? The thought made Nicky shiver inwardly. Then she remembered the sleeping tablets that the doctor had given her. With any luck, they would totally zonk her out. The idea of being mindless, oblivious, unconscious of everything that had happened for a few hours was suddenly enormously appealing.

“Just one more thing,” he said.

She looked a question at him.

“Did you get any phone calls after the program ended? On your cell phone, I mean?”

Nicky frowned. “I don’t know. My phone’s in my purse. I turned it off and put it there before we went on the air, and I haven’t looked at it since.”

“Would you mind checking it now?”

“All right.” Nicky stood up and took a step, then caught at the curved wing of the chair as her head swam unexpectedly. Rising fast was clearly not going to be on the program for a while.

He came off the desk as she faltered, then stood irresolute in front of it, his gaze sliding over her. “You’ve had a rough night, remember? You might want to sit back down.”

“My purse is in the kitchen.” In the midst of the bedlam that had descended on the Old Taylor Place after Karen’s body had been found, someone had nevertheless managed to locate Nicky’s purse and bundle it, with her all-important insurance card, off to the clinic with her, and it was now hanging from the coat rack by the kitchen door.

“I’ll get it. Just tell me where.”

She told him.

“Sit down,” he said, making it sound like an order, then clicked off the tape recorder and left the room.

Instead of sitting, which, given the way she felt, was undoubtedly what she
should
do, she took a few deep breaths and waited for her head to clear. When it did, she let go of the chair and walked the few paces to the desk, where she was staring down at the small silver tape recorder on the desktop when he came back with her purse.

“I thought I told you to sit back down.” He handed over her purse, which was a big, black leather tote, a designer knockoff that was a whole heck of a lot less expensive than it looked, crammed with the minutiae of her life.

As her hand closed around the smooth leather straps, she met his gaze.

“Do people always do what you say?” she asked in a pseudo-interested tone.

“Usually.” His eyes crinkled slightly at the corners, as if he was fighting a smile. “If they’re smart.”

Touché,
she thought as her knees gave a warning quiver, and she put her purse down on the desk without replying. Leaning a hip against the heavy piece of furniture for unobtrusive support and digging a hand into the side pocket, she found her phone and held it up for him to see. He was standing maybe three feet away, watching her, his expression unreadable.

His gaze flicked to the phone. “Mind checking your call record?”

“Why?” Even as she asked the question, Nicky flipped open the phone and pressed a button: There were four missed calls. She glanced up at him. “Who do you think might have called me?”

“We found Karen’s cell phone in some bushes across the street from the Old Taylor Place. The last incoming call, at least the last one she answered and that we can use to verify that she was still alive, was from Sid Levin, who I understand is some big wheel with your show’s production company, at nine fifty-two p.m.” He paused. “The last outgoing call on it was to you.”

“Oh.” The information was like a knife to her heart. Nicky remembered Karen calling to warn her that the local fuzz was trying to shut down the broadcast. The conversation seemed like it had taken place a lifetime ago. “But that was earlier. Before we went on the . . .”

Her voice trailed off as she studied her call record. The missed calls—one of which was from Sid Levin’s private number, she felt a brief flicker of excitement to see—had all been logged after the broadcast ended. Karen’s number was listed last.

“Karen called me at ten forty-seven p.m.,” Nicky said slowly, staring at the data on the glowing screen. The truth hit her like a fist to the stomach: By 10:47 p.m., Karen had been dead. Nicky would have been in Dave the Deputy’s car on her way to the clinic.

Her breathing suspended. She looked up to meet Joe’s eyes. She didn’t have to point out that Karen had been dead by the time the call had been placed. It was clear, from his expression, that he knew.

“Hang on a minute.”

He took a step forward and reached around her to turn on the tape recorder.

“Miss Sullivan confirms that her cell phone received a call from Miss Wise’s cell phone at ten forty-seven p.m. Miss Sullivan’s phone was, at that time, turned off.” He looked at her. He was so close that she could have reached out and touched him if she chose, and his body now seemed to radiate tension. She was reminded, suddenly, that he was a cop. “Do you have any messages?”

Nicky nodded. She’d just discovered that she was unable to speak.

“Miss Sullivan indicated that she has messages,” he said for the benefit of the tape recorder. Then, to her, “Mind playing them?”

Nicky shook her head, remembered the tape recorder, and managed a husky “No.”

Then she pressed the
replay messages
button.

The first message was from Livvy. “Nick, I just remembered: We’re out of ice cream. Would you mind stopping by Baskin-Robbins and picking up a quart of Rocky Road on your way home? Thanks.”

The second was from Sarah Greenberg,
Twenty-four Hours Investigates
’s overworked supervising producer. “Wow! Home run! You did it! We’re already starting to get floods of calls and e-mails. From what we can tell so far, viewers loved it! Tell your mom thanks from all of us here. Talk to you later.”

The third was from—
Be still my heart
—Sid Levin. “An impressive piece of work, Ms. Sullivan. When you get in tomorrow, stop by my office. Maybe you can do something more along that line for us.”

The warm little thrill with which she heard that last message was immediately vanquished as the next message came up. It was from Karen. Her name and number blinked on the screen. Nicky held her breath as she waited.

She had known, of course, that it couldn’t possibly be Karen’s voice, and it wasn’t. The deep tones belonged to a man.

All he said was, “Are you superstitious?”

But just hearing that hoarse, raspy whisper again was enough to make Nicky go light-headed. She knew immediately who it was: Karen’s killer, the man who had attacked Nicky herself, the evil presence under the pines. Her knees gave out, and she would have fallen if Joe hadn’t caught her. He grabbed her elbows, said “Hey” in a surprised tone, then took one look at her face and pulled her into his arms.

If she hadn’t had the solid wall of his body to collapse against, she would have crumpled to the floor at his feet. Her muscles seemed to have turned to Jell-O. Her legs threatened to fold beneath her. The room whirled. For a moment, all she could do was close her eyes, hang on to the only available solid support, and breathe.

“It’s okay.” His voice was low and faintly husky in her ear, and his arms were warm and strong around her. “Just stay put a minute.”

“It’s him,” she managed finally. Her head was turned to the side so that her cheek rested against the sturdy width of his shoulder. For all his leanness, he was much bigger than she was, wider, taller, taut with muscle. She could feel the warmth of his body heat, smell the faint aroma of—
What was it? Cigarettes?
—hear the steady whisper of his breathing. He felt hard and strong and unmistakably masculine against her, and as her mind began to function again, it occurred to her that she was clinging to him like icing to a cake.

She opened her eyes to discover that they were just inches from the strong, brown column of his throat. His jaw and chin were dark with stubble and stubbornly male. As she looked at him, he slanted a glance down at her, and their eyes met.