Superstition (40 page)

Now there was a thought: Brian was the result of a periodic brain spasm.

“Hey, Joe.” Dave waved at him. He was looking slightly worried, and Joe guessed that Dave must have heard him yelling and maybe even seen him slam his hands down on the tabletop, too.

God, Joe hoped Dave hadn’t seen or heard any more than that. Watching his boss have a one-sided conversation with an unseen presence wasn’t going to do anything for Dave’s morale—to say nothing of the rest of the force’s—if word of this got out.

Joe crossed to the door and pulled it open.

“I was on the phone,” he began, feeling a little awkward as he attempted to explain away whatever Dave might have witnessed. A snuffling sound caused him to break off and look down in the general vicinity of Dave’s knees. Cleo looked back at him, her velvety snout quivering, her round, black eyes shining in the reflected light from the kitchen.

He might be in the middle of having some kind of mental breakdown, but that didn’t make him stupid.

“No,” he said before Dave could say anything. “Like I said before, I don’t do pigs.”

“It’s not just Cleo,” Dave said forlornly. “It’s me. Amy’s kicked us both out. I need a place to stay the night, too.”

A beat passed.

Let’s see,
Joe thought as his gaze moved from one refugee to the other, the last twenty-four hours had included a hot romantic interlude, a grisly murder, a whole lot of crap from a whole lot of people, a buttload of work, an ambush by a pack of reporters, a ghost or a mental breakdown (take your pick), and now a prospective new roomie who came complete with his own pig. In other words, just one more happening day in paradise.

“ ‘Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives,’ ” Brian said in his ear. The bastard was standing right behind him, and Joe didn’t have to glance around to know that he was grinning like the Cheshire Cat. Clearly, Dave wasn’t seeing or hearing a thing.

“Shit,” Joe said in resignation, opening the door wider. “Come on in. Not you, pig.”

17

J
OE PICKED UP THE CHAIR, Dave raided the refrigerator, and they were just sitting down at the table with two cold ones and a couple bologna sandwiches when Joe noticed the pig up on its hind legs, looking through the window at them. He alerted Dave, who went out and fed it the rest of the brand-new package of bologna from Joe’s refrigerator that Dave had just opened to make the sandwiches. It was beef bologna, so it was all right for the pig to eat it, at least in a karmic sense, but as Joe had had other plans for the lunch meat, he was feeling slightly disgruntled when Dave came back into the kitchen.

“You owe me a package of bologna,” Joe said, looking up from the Marsha Browning file, which was one of several he’d brought home with him. On the plus side, at least the pig was no longer looking at him through the window.

“I’ll stop by the store tomorrow,” Dave promised. “You want me to pick anything else up while I’m there? Milk? Eggs? What do we need?”

That “we,” coupled with the idea of Dave doing the grocery shopping for the both of them, had sort of a cozy sound to it—way too cozy for Joe. They were fifteen minutes into the whole roomie thing, and already it wasn’t working for him.

That being the case, the thing to do was get his new roomie back home where he belonged without delay.

“Forget about the bologna,” he said. “Tell me what happened with Amy.”

That was all the encouragement Dave needed. He sat down with his beer and started giving Joe a play-by-play that soon fell under the category of Too Much Information. By the time Dave finished his tale of woe, Joe, who by then was listening with half an ear, had finished his beer and his sandwich and was halfway through his cross-check of the Karen Wise and Marsha Browning files. The reason he was able to listen and go over evidence at the same time was simple: There had been almost no doubt in his mind right from the beginning that those two murders had been committed by the same perp. Comparing either of them with Tara Mitchell required more concentration: There were many more areas of dissimilarity, enough so that he was almost ready to conclude with some certainty that the same perp was not involved. Of course, the Mitchell file was fifteen years old and compiled on somebody else’s watch. It was always possible that it wasn’t entirely accurate, or that things had been lost or left out.

Hell, that was always possible on his watch, too.

“I mean, I understand Amy’s position,” Dave concluded forlornly. “But Cleo was just hungry. That’s all it was.”

Joe looked up from his vital, potentially case-solving work to meet his Number Two’s hangdog gaze. Under the circumstances, staying out of this had ceased to be an option. Just call him Dr. Phil.

“So, Amy brought home a pizza and the pig knocked it out of her hands and ate it.” Joe summed up in a sentence the story it had taken Dave a good fifteen minutes to relate.

“Amy says Cleo attacked her again. Cleo didn’t
attack
her. She’s not that kind of pig. Amy just won’t listen.” Dave picked up his bottle of beer but set it back down before it even touched his lips. Apparently, this latest contretemps had upset him to the point where even beer had lost its appeal. “Anyway, it was my fault. Cleo is used to getting table scraps in the morning and at night. What with, you know, the murder and all, I’ve been working for pretty much the last twenty-four hours straight. I didn’t get a chance to get home to give Cleo her treats. All she had was the food in her dispenser, and she doesn’t much like that.”

Joe considered various diplomatic approaches to what he had to say.

“You know, I may be missing the big picture here. But it seems to me that you were a lot happier before Amy moved in with you than you have been since.”

Dave frowned. “So, what are you saying?”

“All I’m saying is that maybe Amy’s not the woman for you.”

“In what way?”

Joe sighed. Diplomacy clearly wasn’t his thing. At any rate, Dave didn’t seem to be getting the drift.

“You like pigs; she doesn’t. Maybe you should give up on her and start looking for somebody you’d be more compatible with.”

“Amy and I are compatible.” Dave gave Joe a wounded look. Then his mouth twisted and he slumped a little. “Well, sort of. Except for her griping when I have to work overtime and weekends. And then when I am home,
she
works late. And there’s always something going on with her ex-husband and the kids. And, um, then there’s Cleo.”

To hell with it,
Joe thought. He was too tired for this. Let Dr. Phil be Dr. Phil.

“There you go, then. You two are clearly soul mates.” Sick of the whole subject, he went back to work. “Did you get those phone records checked?”

“About a third. It’s pretty time-consuming. Both those women spent a lot of time yakking on the phone. Then, when I call to verify what was said, a lot of time I get away messages. And some of the unknown-caller types take a while to track down.”

“Yeah,” Joe said. “I—”

A sudden explosion of sound in the living room made both him and Dave jump.

“What the hell?” Joe said, as the noise resolved itself into the TV, which was now blaring at top volume.

He and Dave were already on their way into the living room when it occurred to Joe that the set had been turned off the last time he’d looked. But it was definitely on now, he saw as he reached the living room. The volume was so loud that it made him wince as he hurried to grab the remote from the end table and turn it down.

“How’d that happen?” Dave said when they could make themselves heard again. He was frowning as he stared at the TV. “That was weird.”

But Joe’s attention was riveted on the screen. Once he saw what was on, the situation became all too clear. Brian again, or some kind of weird energy from a brain spasm that he hadn’t even felt. Or something.

Whatever, he was looking at Nicky.

“Good evening. This is
Twenty-four Hours Investigates
, and I’m Nicole Sullivan,” Nicky said into the camera. Her face filled the screen, and Joe missed a beat or two of what she was saying as he absorbed just how truly gorgeous she was. Shining red hair; big brown eyes; porcelain skin; full, pouty lips—watching her, he had a tantalizing flashback to how she had felt in his arms. He now knew that those lips were as soft and hot as they looked. . . .

“We found a bloody footprint in Marsha Browning’s house that matched one at the site of Karen Wise’s murder?” Dave asked, frowning. “I didn’t know that.”

Clearly he’d missed something, Joe realized. He mentally tuned back in to the program just in time to watch as a shot of Marsha Browning’s body being rolled down her lawn to the coroner’s van filled the screen. Then Nicky was back, saying, “Both times the Lazarus Killer called this reporter from the victim’s own phone. In Marsha Browning’s case, the call was placed from a landline in her house
before
the body was found. Police used that call to locate the victim. Afterwards, in the wee hours of this morning, the Lazarus Killer sent me another cryptic e-mail. This is what it said.” A printout of the e-mail filled the screen. “Dogs howling in the dark of night . . .”

“Shit,” Joe said, and sat down abruptly on the couch to watch with growing horror as every significant detail the investigation had turned up so far was aired on national TV.

“YOU LOOK GOOD ON TV,” Elaine Ferrell said as she walked Nicky to her front door. “Maybe you might want to think about adding a little poof to your hair. If you do, just let me know, I can work you right in. Anyway, tell your mom I said hi.”

“I will,” Nicky promised as she stepped outside into the star-studded night. “And thanks.”

Mrs. Ferrell waved and closed the door, which meant that Nicky was now alone, standing on the small front stoop with the dim glow of the porch light illuminating her for all to see. The idea creeped her out. With a long look around to make sure nothing lurked behind the well-trimmed bushes that hugged the front of the house, she moved off the stoop and headed quickly down the lawn. She’d been inside, talking to the bleached-blonde, sixty-year-old Mrs. Ferrell for almost an hour. It was a little after ten p.m., and except for the glimmers of lights spilling from the windows of the houses lining the street, the night was dark as a cave. The breeze was no more than a warm breath against her skin, but she felt chilly in her black T-shirt and white jeans. She could hear things—the whir of insects, the faint bass beat of a distant stereo, the muffled clang of metal against metal. She could feel things—like unseen eyes watching her through the darkness. The thought was fanciful, but it still made her shiver. If it hadn’t been for the presence of Lieutenant Randy Brown, her police escort, now standing patiently beside his cruiser, which was parked at the curb a mere fifty feet away, she would have been as nervous as a turtle on the freeway as she hurried toward her car, which was parked in front of the cruiser. As it was, she couldn’t escape the feeling that something was keeping pace with her just beyond her field of vision, scuttling along through the dark. She could almost feel the whisper of evil breathing down her neck.

It was, she was almost sure, her imagination, fueled by the horrific events of the past week. The memories her mother had unleashed last night seemed to have left her sensitized to atmosphere, and the disturbing dreams that had followed hadn’t helped. Karen and Tara Mitchell had appeared, separately and together, whispering to her in voices so low that she couldn’t quite understand what they were saying, no matter how hard she had strained to hear.

But she had formed the impression that they were trying to warn her.

They were only dreams, of course, and no wonder she was having them. Anyone would, under the circumstances. And Tara Mitchell’s ghost had appeared to many people. It didn’t mean—none of it meant—that she had some long-buried, slowly awakening psychic ability.

Did it?

Every time Nicky allowed herself to entertain it, the possibility made her shiver, which was why she needed to put it out of her mind, she told herself firmly. It would do no one any good to succumb to the eerie, unshakable sensation that no matter what she did or where she went, she was marking time until something terrible happened.

The key to keeping rooted in the here and now was to stay focused on her job, and that was what she intended to do. Her segment of
Twenty-four Hours Investigates
had looked and sounded great. She’d logged a number of congratulatory phone calls, most notably one from Sid Levin saying that he was now sure he’d made the right choice in sending her instead of Carl.

And then Mrs. Ferrell, who also had watched
Twenty-four Hours Investigates
, had phoned Leonora with some news to be passed along to Nicky. Mrs. Ferrell was Leonora’s longtime hairdresser. She was also the island’s biggest busybody, forever peeping out her windows and prying into other people’s affairs. The pertinent thing about this was, Mrs. Ferrell lived across the street and two houses down from Marsha Browning.

Mrs. Ferrell reported that she was almost positive she’d seen a man close Marsha’s living-room drapes on the night of the murder.

This bit of information, when relayed by her mother, had sent Nicky hightailing it over to Mrs. Ferrell’s house for a little girl talk. Neighborly gossip was what Nicky had been after, and neighborly gossip was what she’d gotten. All kinds of good, juicy dirt that when sorted through just might provide a solid lead or two. All it took was the right one, and the monster would be caught.

Headlights lit up the night, causing Nicky to glance around. A white-paneled van drove past just as Nicky reached the street. As it drew even with Marsha Browning’s house, it stopped. The rear door slid open with a harsh metallic sound, somebody jumped to the pavement, and seconds later, an explosion of popping white lights lit up the night.

Nicky checked for a moment, watching wide-eyed. She knew those lights: They came from a professional photographer’s camera. More press was on the scene. Marsha Browning’s yard was ringed by crime-scene tape, and there was a cop car parked in the driveway, but as Nicky knew from her own experience, that had never stopped any reporter worth his or her salt.