Hot Blooded

  And yet she couldn't ignore the niggle of doubt that crept through her mind. Had someone been in her house? She bit her lip and silently told herself to be rational.

  Carefully, she read each label, sorting through boxes of old tax records, school papers, reports and patient files until she found the box with Annie Seger's information in it. Dragging the crate into the closet, she heard the hornets buzzing. One mad insect followed her through the long skirts of her dresses, landed on her head and as she swatted at him, stung her on the side of the neck.

  "Damn." She shut the door to the attic, latched it firmly and carried the box into the bedroom, where she dropped it unceremoniously on the floor. Her neck throbbed. She'd have to do something about the nest and soon before the hornets found their way into her closet, bedroom and the rest of the house.

  In the bathroom, she doused a washcloth in cold water, then using a mirror inspected and washed the sting. A red welt had already risen on her skin and the only medication she had in the cupboard was years-old calamine lotion which she dabbed on the side of her neck. "Stupid thing," she muttered and heard Mrs. Killingsworth's dog start to bark. She walked toward the front of the house to investigate and heard footsteps on the front porch. Expecting to hear the doorbell chime, or a rap of knuckles on the door, she started downstairs.

  The telephone rang and she yelled, "Just a minute," in the direction of the door as she dashed into the den.

  She swept up the receiver before the third ring. "Hello?" she called into the mouthpiece. No answer. "Hello?"

  Again no response. And yet someone was on the other end of the line. She was certain of it. Could sense that someone was there.

  "Who is this?" she said, irritation and a drip of fear in her voice. "Hello?" She waited thirty seconds, then said, "Look, I can't hear you."

  Was there someone breathing on the other end or was it a bad connection? It didn't matter. Without saying goodbye, she hung up and tried to convince herself it was nothing.

  Or was it?

  She checked caller ID.

  Unavailable.

  Just like the calls to the station.

  Don't even think that way. It was a bad connection. Whoever it was will call back.

  She walked into the foyer to the front door and realized that the bell had never rung, nor had anyone knocked. Odd.

  She looked through the peephole, and through the fish-eye lens saw no one.

  Leaving the chain in place, she opened the door a crack and snapped on the exterior light.

  The porch was empty. Her wind chimes jingled in the breeze. Across the street Hannibal was staring at her house and putting up a ruckus, barking his fool head off.

  Unhooking the chain, she stepped outside. She was alone. But the porch swing was swaying. As if someone or something had pushed it.

  Her heart froze. She scanned the front yard and drive. "Hello?" she called into the coming night. "Hello?"

  From around the corner there was a noise—the scrape of leather on aging planks. Or her imagination?

  Heart hammering, she walked to the corner of the porch and looked along the side of the house where the porch fell in shadow. Aside from the patches of light thrown from the dining-room window, the night had closed in.

  Squinting, she was certain she saw a movement in the hedge separating her house from the neighbors, but it could have been the breeze filtering through the leaves or a squirrel scrambling over the branches, or even a cat slinking through the shadows.

  You're losing it, Sam, she thought, turning back to the front of the house. You're imagining things.

  But the old porch swing was still rocking slightly, mocking her as it swayed, and the sense that she wasn't alone, that hidden eyes were watching her made her skin prickle. Who? she wondered as she walked inside and locked the door firmly behind her. The phone shrilled and she started.

  Get a grip!

  She let it ring again. And again. Heart hammering, she picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

  "Hello, Dr. Sam," John's voice intoned and she leaned against the desk for the support. "You know what day this is, don't you?"

  "It's the twenty-second."

  "Annie's birthday."

  "So you say. Who was the girl who called in the other night?"

  "Have you thought about your sins? That you should repent?"

  "Repent for what?" she asked, sweat dripping down her back. She glanced out the window, wondered if he was outside, if it was his footsteps she'd heard on the porch, if he was calling from a cell phone. She stepped to the window and drew down the shade.

  "You tell me."

  "I'm not responsible for Annie's death."

  "Not the right attitude, Sam."

  "Who are you?" she demanded, her muscles tense, her head pounding. "Have we met? Do I know you?"

  "All you need to know is that what happens tonight is because of you. Because of your sins. You need to repent, Sam. Beg forgiveness."

  "What are you going to do?" she asked, suddenly cold as death.

  "You'll see."

  "No—Don't—"

  Click. The phone went dead.

  "Oh, God, no!" Sam wilted into her chair. Dropped her head into her hands. She'd felt the evil in his voice, the cruelty. Something was going to happen. Something horrid. And she was to blame.

  Pull yourself together. Don't let him beat you down. You have to stop him. YOU! Think, Sam, think. Call the police. Alert Bentz. And then do whatever you can.

  She dialed the police in New Orleans and nearly went out of her mind when she was told Rick Bentz would be paged and he'd have to call her back. "Tell him it's an emergency," she insisted before hanging up. What could she do? How could she stop whatever evil John had planned? She jumped when the phone rang again, picked up the receiver, expecting another threat.

  "Hello?" she said, her knees nearly giving way.

  "This is Bentz. I got a message you called about some emergency."

  "John just called me," she said. "Here, at the house."

  "What did he say?"

  "He wanted me to repent, that if I didn't, I would pay for my sins, the same old thing, but then he added that if I didn't something bad was going to happen. Tonight. And it would be my fault."

  "Son of a—wait a minute. Let's start over. Slowly. I don't suppose you taped the conversation."

  "No… I didn't think of it. It was over too quickly."

  "Tell me everything that's gone on," he suggested and she obliged. She didn't leave out a thing, mentioning that she'd gotten several hangups, that she'd thought her red teddy was missing, that she felt the house was being watched. Bentz listened and gave her the same advice as he did before, to be careful, lock her doors, get a watchdog, keep the alarm system on. "… and you might want to consider staying with a friend. Just until this is over."

  She hung up, feeling a little better. But she knew she couldn't sit around and wait for John to make good his threat. No way. She had to figure out who he was.

  Before it was too late.

  "… You want me to wear those?" the girl asked, staring at the man she'd picked up near the river and motioning to a wig of long red hair and a lacy scarlet teddy, both of which were dangling from his fingers.

  "That's right." He was calm. And weird. And the sunglasses covering his eyes only made it worse.

  She'd turned a few tricks before, when she'd been desperate and she'd been asked to do some sicko stuff, but this seemed more bizarre than usual.

  But then what did she know? She just wanted to get through it and get the cash.

  He walked to the window and made sure the shades were drawn in this crummy little hotel room, a room he wasn't happy about paying for.

  He'd been hyped up, and the scratch on his face bothered him. He kept looking in the mirror tacked to the back of the door and tracing the welts with his fingers, welts she'd made.

  She'd been sitting on a bench in the park, near the wharf, watching the boats chugging along the lazy river. Deep in t
hought, wondering what she was going to do, she hadn't heard him approach. He'd appeared out of nowhere. The park had been nearly deserted when he'd propositioned her. She'd explained that she didn't have anywhere they could go and he'd gotten pissed off. She'd thought it was finished. But he'd been persistent.

  He'd offered a hundred bucks.

  She would have taken fifty.

  So he'd brought her to this smelly little room just outside of the Quarter. She'd been second-guessing herself ever since his requests. But it was good money. What did it matter if she had to put on a red teddy and cover her own short carrot red locks with this longer, red/auburn wig? The sooner she did as he asked, the sooner she'd be on her way to score some crack. So okay. It was no big deal. She'd done worse things than wear some other woman's things. She wondered if the teddy belonged to his wife or his girlfriend. Just what kind of freak was he in his dark glasses?

  So now he was looking at her again with those dark, hidden eyes. Worse yet he rubbed a rosary between his fingers, and that really creeped her out. She wasn't particularly religious, but she'd been brought up in the church, and it seemed morally wrong, just plain spooky, that he'd brought the rosary along. Sacrilegious.

  But… whatever. She needed a hit. And she'd get it. If she could just get through the next half hour or so. She glanced at the bedside table. Saw the hundred-dollar bill. It was weird, too. Blacked-out eyes on Ben Franklin.

  The John was fiddling with the radio on the bedside table, pushing buttons and glowering at the electronic display until he found a talk station, one she recognized. She swallowed hard as she heard Dr. Sam's voice.

  "Can't… can't we listen to music?" she suggested, feeling a new stab of guilt. It was as if Sam was in the room with them.

  "No."

  "But—"

  "Just get dressed," he ordered, his lips compressing, his thumb and finger rubbing the rosary as if his life depended upon it. The dark glasses and scratch on his cheek convinced her to shut up.

  Sliding out of her platform sandals, she stood barefoot on the worn carpet near the bed, then wiggled out of her tube top. In a few minutes this would be over and then she could leave.

  Dr. Sam's voice floated through the speakers, "So let's hear about it, New Orleans, tell me about the love letters or the Dear John letters you've received."

  The guy froze. Muttered something under his breath, then whipped around glaring at her. He didn't say a word as she kicked off her shorts and struggled into the lacy teddy. Adjusting the straps, she thought fleetingly that the guy was handsome in an eerie way. She'd concentrate on that, his good looks, and wouldn't listen to Dr. Sam. She'd pretend. Just like she always did and she'd just get down to business, get him off and then be on her way. Stuffing her hair under the wig, she angled up her chin and looked at him defiantly.

  "How's that?"

  For a moment he just looked at her, studying her like one of those fruit flies under a microscope in that stupid biology class she'd flunked. She tossed her head and the long hair of the wig swished against her shoulder blades.

  "Perfect," he finally said with the hint of a smile, "Just perfect."

  He approached her and touched her ear, playing with the series of earrings running up from her lobe. Good. He was finally going to get down to it.

  He nuzzled her neck and she forced out a moan she didn't feel, just to get it over with. Lolling her head back and closing her eyes as if she was really getting hot, she sensed something odd, something cold slide over her head to circle her neck.

  What was this shit? She leaned back away from him and realized that the rosary was around her throat, the sharp beads tight against her skin.

  "Hey, wait a minute," she said, and saw him smile for the first time. It was cold. Deadly. Razor-thin lips drawn back over straight white teeth. She tried to pull away, but he yanked hard and with a flip of his wrist, twined the strands together. The beads cut into her neck, bit into her flesh, cut off her breath.

  Panic spurted through her. This wasn't right. She tried to scream. Couldn't. Couldn't drag in a breath of air. Flailing her arms, kicking at his knees and crotch, she fought him, but he sidestepped her bare feet and her hands did little damage against a rock-hard chest. She tried to scratch his face, but he only pulled tighter. Sweat dotted his brow. His teeth clenched with the effort, his lips curling.

  No, oh, God, no. Please, somebody help me!

  Her lungs were on fire. She thought she would burst.

  Please, please. Help me. Please someone, hear what's going on in here and help me!

  She flung a fist at the glasses and he jerked back his head. She saw her own terror twice in the dark lenses as the distorted reflection of her face came into view. She was going to die, she knew it. And the baby within her, the one she hadn't wanted, it was going to die, too.

  He twisted around to her backside, and she felt a second's relief. Her knees buckled. She gasped. Tried to run.

  She dragged in one final breath. Tasted blood, stumbled forward, half-believing she could escape.

  Then he wrenched the unholy noose again.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  "That's a wrap," Melanie said as the strains of "Midnight Confession" faded and an advertisement for an e-company started rolling.

  Shoving her chair away from the desk, Sam let out her breath. She'd been nervous during the show. Edgy. Certain "John" would call again, that he'd only phoned her at the house to prove that he could. To scare her. But he hadn't called in.

  But he'd been listening. Waiting. Knowing he was stretching her nerves to the breaking point. After the phone call at her house, she'd decided to bait him. Her program tonight had been about communications, specifically love letters, Dear John letters and even threatening notes though she hadn't mentioned the card she'd received in her car.

  Listener response had been hot, but "John" hadn't phoned in… yet… There was still time. He'd proven that before when he'd called in after her program had aired.

  Though it was after midnight now. Technically Friday— the day after Annie Seger's birthday.

  She turned off her equipment, studied the unlit phone-line buttons for a second, then met Melanie and Tiny in the hallway.

  "No weirdos tonight," Tiny observed.

  "So far," Sam agreed.

  Tiny shoved his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. "You're disappointed, aren't you? You kind of get off when he calls."

  "Get off?" Sam repeated, her temper sparking. "No… but we can't find him if he hides." She didn't add that she wanted to lure him out, hook him, reel him in and then see that he never terrorized anyone again. Yes, in a perverse way, she wanted to know what made him tick, but more than that, she wanted him off the streets, away from the phones and out of her life.

  "Do you think he'd really call in again after hours?" Melanie asked as she searched in her purse and came up with a tiny box of Tic-Tacs. "Wouldn't that be pushing his luck? I mean, he's got to have figured that you've been to the police by now. He doesn't know that they aren't tracing the calls—or that we aren't." She plopped half a dozen tiny mints into her palm and tossed them into her mouth.

  "Maybe the guy knows what a cheap-ass George Hannah is," Tiny grumbled, then waved his hands in the air. "I didn't say that, okay? I don't want to hear about it in the next staff meeting."

  "It's what we were all thinking anyway," Melanie said, yawning, as she held up the near-empty plastic box of mints in offering. "Anyone?"

  "I'm good," Tiny said, declining.

  "If you say so."

  Sam shook her head. "No, thanks."

  Melanie yawned again. "God, I'm dead tonight. Anyone want to split a Diet Coke?" She was already heading down the hallway toward the kitchen.

  "I've still got some." Tiny turned back to the booth to set up Lights Out.

  Sam was right behind but had one ear open, listening for the phones. "No caffeine for me," she said to Melanie. It was one o'clock on Friday morning; Sam's shift was over for the week, and she
couldn't imagine working on the weekends as well.

  "Would you mind loaning me a buck for the machine?" Melanie asked as they rounded a corner and passed by a wall lined with pictures of local celebrities who had been interviewed at WSLJ.

  "After you took care of Charon and the house while I was gone? I think I can manage."

  "Good."

  Sam found her wallet and handed Melanie a bill as they neared the kitchen. The first strains of soft instrumental music wafted through the hallways. Lights Out had begun and the phone hadn't rung. "Has Eleanor mentioned anything about running Midnight Confessions seven nights instead of five?" Sam asked, trailing after Melanie.

  "I heard it through the grapevine around her. Gator's not too happy…" Melanie's voice faded. "What in the world… Maybe you shouldn't come in here." Melanie stopped dead center in the doorway and was staring to her left, toward the French doors. The dollar bill that Sam had given her had fallen to the floor.

  "Why not?" Sam craned her neck to look over Melanie's shoulder.

  Her blood ran cold at the sight of the cake—iced in white frosting and supporting about two dozen red candles. "Jesus."

  "This has something to do with that Annie girl," Melanie said, swallowing hard.

  Sam pushed past her and strode to the table. Her head was pounding, her heart pumping wildly. "Who did this?" she asked. "Who got in here and planted this thing?"

  "I… I… don't know."

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANNIE blazed across the white icing in red letters while the candles were burning, red wax dripping down the sides of the cake like rivulets of blood, smoke twisting upward from the tiny flames.

  "Is this someone's idea of a joke ?" Sam asked, glaring down at the concoction. She counted. Twenty-five candles. One for every year of Annie Seger's life and death. "Did you do this, Melanie?"

  "Me? Why? Are you nuts?" Melanie shook her head. "I—I've been in the booth all night. You know it. You were there…" Her face crumpled in on itself, and she blinked as if she might cry. "… How could you even think—"