The Morning After (8 page)

“Very funny,” he mocked, though the thought rankled. Obviously, Baldwin didn’t trust him.
Would you? Come
on!
Baldwin’s just covering his ass.
“I thought maybe you’d want to tag along.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She unwrapped a disfigured stick of gum and popped it into her mouth. “So, fill me in.”

Reed told her everything he remembered, from the chopper ride upstate through the grisly discoveries in the grave to the meeting in which Sheriff Baldwin ‘for the sake of department integrity’ had decided to send McFee to lead the investigation. The fact that he was allowing Reed, an ex-lover of Bobbi Jean’s, to tag along, severely bent the rules. When he’d finished, Morrisette whistled. “Jesus, Reed, what a mess. You think the note in the coffin is connected with the one delivered here yesterday?”

“Seems like too much of a coincidence not to. And it looks identical. Same paper, same handwriting. The lab is comparing the two as well as checking for prints.”

“We should get so lucky,” Morrisette muttered as the phone rang.

Reed held up a finger, silently asking her to wait, and picked up. Though he was hoping for information on Bobbi and the other woman in the coffin, it was another case in which a couple of kids were playing with their father’s revolver and one ended up dead. A depressing way to start an already bad morning.

While he was on the call, Morrisette’s beeper went off and she grabbed her cell phone from her fringed purse and disappeared out the door. She returned before he hung up, but didn’t slide into the chair again. Instead, she propped her slim butt on the windowsill and waited until he hung up. The door to his office was ajar and he heard voices and footsteps, officers and staff arriving for the day shift.

“So, when are you visiting the deceased’s husband to give him the news?” Morrisette asked as a telephone jangled down the hallway.

“Ex-husband. As soon as the detective from Lumpkin County gets here.”

“What about the autopsy?”

“Done in Atlanta, sometime today, probably. It’s got priority. But first they want someone besides me to ID the body.”

“Who knew you were involved with the woman?”

“Aside from Marx, no one.”

“No one that you knew. She could have spilled the beans to a friend.”

“Or Marx could have.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Six, maybe seven weeks ago.”

“That when you called it off?”

“Yep.”

“Learned that she wasn’t quite divorced.”

“Mmm.”

“When was she reported missing?”

“She wasn’t. I checked with Rita in Missing Persons.” He loosened the top button on his collar and yanked at his tie. “But then, she hadn’t been dead all that long. The coroner thinks less than twelve hours when we found her. We’re starting to work backward from then, find out who saw her last, what she was doing.” He glanced at the clock. “I thought I’d check with the jewelry store where she worked.”

“You know any of her friends?”

He thought, and shook his head, then thought that he’d really not even known her. Their affair had been sexual, yes, but not much more than that. And yet…the killer had linked them and it soured his stomach to think that she might have died such a horrid death because of her link to him.

As if Sylvie Morrisette had read his mind, she said, “Don’t beat yourself up. I see it in your eyes. You think this woman is dead because of you. Because of the notes.”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know. Not yet. Neither do you.” She hopped off the sill. “Let’s stay objective.”

Reed wondered if that were possible.

He had the distinct feeling it might not be.

The phone jangled and he picked it up just as Detective McFee arrived. The big man dwarfed Morrisette and Reed couldn’t help but think of Lurch of the
Addams Family
on seeing McFee in the morning light. Not only was he large and rawboned, but his skin was sallow and his eyes deep-set. Reed introduced the two detectives, noticed how Morrisette gave McFee the once-over, and mentally chastised himself. Why was it Sylvie “tough-as-nails” Morrisette, four times divorced, still sized up every man she met as if they might be the candidate for number five?

Grabbing his jacket, he decided he’d never figure it out.

A slow smile crept across The Survivor’s face as he watched the morning news. The late-night reports had been sketchy, but as the day had broken, more information was surfacing about the discovery in the ravine near Blood Mountain. It was the lead story.

Balancing on the edge of his ottoman, he recorded and watched five different screens, all with different reporters, but all telling essentially the same tale. There was footage of the grave site, taken from helicopters that had hovered above the bottom of the ravine as dawn crept over the forest floor. Crime scene workers were still searching the ground for evidence. The area around the grave had been marked in a grid, and the workers painstakingly sifted through every inch of soil, dead leaves and dry grass. As if they’d find anything.

His blood quickened at the thought that he’d caused this confusion. That all these people were working because of him. That Pierce Reed’s life had been disturbed and he’d been dragged up north to the place he’d been born. Reed had spent the first few years of his life in a two bedroom house outside of Dahlonega. A bonafide, dyed-in-the-wool Georgia cracker, though most people assumed he’d started life somewhere in the Midwest and Reed did little to disavow this misinformation. The man was a fake. A phony. A slimeball.

But he was about to get his comeuppance.

One of the screens flickered with the image of the dead buck—the deer that lunatic kid had killed. Some of The Survivor’s joy diminished…He hadn’t counted on the hunters. Had thought he was alone along the windswept deer trails.

He climbed to his feet and could barely stand up in this small room where the televisions dominated one brick wall and their flickering screens offered the only light. One wall was all shelves, floor to ceiling filled with all of his electronic equipment. Microphones. Video cameras. Surveillance gear. And hundreds of movies he’d purchased on tape and DVD. Movies about heroes who had beat the odds, who had survived and avenged, who had taken justice into their own hands, who had meted out their own kind of payback.

Charles Bronson.

Bruce Lee.

Clint Eastwood.

Mel Gibson.

Keanu Reeves.

Actors who had portrayed tough men were his idols. Stories that told of men enduring horrid pain, then wreaking vengeance. Mad Max, Rambo, The Matrix…those were the films that made his blood run hot.

He had few clothes hidden here, though, in his other life, the one he let the world see, he had suits and jeans, dress shirts, Dockers and even polo shirts. But here, his needs were simple. Basic. Hooks held his camouflage outfit and wet suit. A steel door hid a closet he’d fashioned himself, small, confining, dark. With no doorknob on the interior side. A perfect place to keep someone alive. His furniture was sparse—a worktable, a battered chair and ottoman facing the screens and his prize, an antique dresser and mirror he’d salvaged from his mother’s home.

He walked to the bureau and saw his reflection in the cracked oval mirror. Backlit by the flickering screens, he studied his image. Icy eyes stared back at him—eyes that had been labeled troubled, or sexy, or bedroom or cold. Rimmed with spiky lashes and protected by thick brows, one of which was split and bore a small scar. Even that imperfection had added to his allure with women; some considered him thrilling and dangerous.

Sensual.

A brooding, quiet man with secrets.

If they only knew.

He saw his upper body, strong from working out—army style. Fingertip push-ups and hundreds of chin-ups and sit-ups. Swimming. Running. Exertion. Perfection. Every muscle honed.

How else would he have survived?

He opened the second drawer and looked at the clothes within. A lacy black slip, bra and panties…the whore Barbara Jean Marx’s underclothes. There were other scraps as well, rotting fabric that had been covering the dead woman’s privates. Nasty, dirty, now encased in a plastic sack. He needed the old underwear, of course, so that his collection would be complete, but didn’t want the torn, filthy, rotting fabric to touch the silken perfection of Barbara Jean Marx’s expensive panties, slip and bra.

Touching the whore’s underthings, running the silk through his fingers brought a welcome warmth to his blood and he closed his eyes for a second, lifted the panties to his nostrils, felt the thickening in his groin. As much as he’d hated her, he’d lusted after her. All normal men did.

And what do you think is normal about you, you useless, stupid sack of shit?

The voice withered his erection and he forced himself not to hear the taunts that still reverberated through his mind. He folded Barbara Jean’s underclothes and slipped them into their plastic sack, then gave himself a swift mental kick for losing the ring…damn it all to hell, he’d wanted that ring, fancied himself fondling the glittering stones as he’d watched the news about Barbara Jean Marx, ex-model, rich wife’s bizarre death. But somehow, he’d lost the damned ring. Another mistake. His jaw tightened.

Slipping her clothes into the second drawer, he noticed the drops of dried blood on the bureau and touched them lightly with the pad of his thumb. As he often did. Just to remember. But he was careful not to wipe the drops too hard, needed them to stay where they were, even the ones that ran down the side. A few dark stains settled over the lip of the top drawer and around the keyhole, but he didn’t open it. Would never. That private space was sacred. Could not be violated. He touched the chain at his neck and the small key that hung from it.

Sometimes it was tempting to take off the links of worn gold and slip the key into its lock and listen as it clicked. The old drawer would open slowly, sealed from the blood that had once been sticky, and then he would…

Not! He would never open the drawer.

All the recording lights were glowing. He could leave. Assume his other life. He licked his lips and tried to slow the rapid beat of his heart as he took one last look at the news and the havoc he’d caused. Because of a whore’s gruesome death. Again, he imagined her waking in the coffin, terror riddling her body. He could have hauled the coffin to the surface, been her hero and taken her then. She would have done anything for him. Spread her legs. Sucked his cock. Anything.

He felt a rush of desire, a jet of lust running through his bloodstream, and he imagined Pierce Reed in bed with her.

Bastard.

The Survivor’s mouth was suddenly dry. He couldn’t pull up any spit as he stared at the televisions and remembered plunging the needle into her arm…. She’d collapsed, crying out as she lost consciousness and…A series of beeps brought him out of his reverie. He snapped back to the moment and realized he was running out of time. Quickly he clicked off the alarm on his watch, slid out of the room and, as the recorders taped every moment of the news, walked quietly through the dark corridors that were little more than tunnels. He braced himself to face the cold winter morning and the new day.

Finally, his time had come.

CHAPTER 4

Quietly he stole through the shadows. It was just twilight and he was dead tired and if he were caught, he’d probably lose his job, but Reed slipped through the back gate and, finding a spare key where Bobbi had always kept one behind the hose bib, he let himself into the garage, stepped out of his shoes and walked into her kitchen. The shades were pulled down and the light over the stove was burning softly, just as always. He hadn’t been in the cottage in months and yet it was familiar. The only reason he’d risked visiting her house was that he was certain he’d be thrown off the case. The second the D.A. caught wind that he’d been intimate with a victim, Reed would be diverted to other cases and all the information on Bobbi’s death would be off-limits to him. Which galled the hell out of him.

He walked in stockinged feet across the worn hardwood, through a small eating space to the living room, arranged just as he remembered, with overstuffed furniture, colorful throws and plants growing in every corner. Newspaper sections were scattered on the coffee table. He didn’t disturb them, but noted that it was the morning edition of the
Savannah Sentinel
, dated two days earlier. Bobbi, or whoever had been in the cottage, had been reading about the local news. The boldest headline was about a reconstruction project in the historic district and the byline was Nikki Gillette. One of the most irritating women he’d ever met, one of those dogged, do-anything-for-a-story reporters who was ever trying to get ahead. She had the looks for it. Curly red-blond hair, bright eyes, tight ass, but she was trouble. Not only an aggressive reporter, but the daughter of the Honorable Judge Ronald Gillette.

Reed carefully swung his penlight past the paper to a plate with a nearly burned, half-eaten piece of toast. Jelly congealed in one corner of the plate, and a cup of coffee, again half drunk, showed lipstick stains on its rim. Breakfast. Two days earlier.

He walked into the master bedroom. The sheets were rumpled, half off the bed, a pillow on the floor, but he knew from experience that it wasn’t a sign of a struggle. Bobbi always left her bed in disarray. “I think it’s sexy that way, don’t you?” she’d asked him once as she stood on her tiptoes and kissed the bend of his neck. “That way the bedroom always looks like you’ve just made love and are ready to go at it again.”

She’d never seen his military-sharp bed or austere room with a single dresser, thirteen-inch TV, half-mirror and rowing machine.

The closet door was open. He swept the penlight through the interior. Dirty clothes were falling out of a basket on the floor, dresses hung neatly above. Using a cloth he opened the dresser drawers and found underclothes, sachets, T-shirts and shorts. Nothing out of the ordinary. Her nightstand gave up a vibrator, creams, Kleenex, a broken picture of her dressed as a bride and a worn copy of the Bible. Nothing unusual. Nothing incriminating.