The Morning After

  Reed turned his attention to Nikki again. “Now, listen to me, Miss Gillette. The only tip I’m giving today is to Jo, for serving me this.” He jabbed a fork at his grits. “I have nothing to say to you but ‘no comment,’ and no matter how many E-mails or voice mails or any kind of messages you leave me, I won’t have anything to say until the department issues a statement, and probably not then. You’ll have to live with what the rest of the reporters in town get.”

  She felt her back going up. “You know, Reed,” she said, “I never figured you for sticking to the company line. I thought you had more guts. More class. That you’d form your own opinions.”

  “And tell them to you?” he asked, jaw sliding to one side.

  “I always heard you were a rogue cop, someone who bent the rules to get to the truth.”

  “You heard wrong.”

  “Did I?” she challenged. “Why did you go up to Lumpkin County? A detective from Savannah. Were you called in to give your expertise? Or did you have some connection to the place? To the killing? Why you?”

  He didn’t answer but there was the tiniest of flickers in his eyes, a shadow slipping quickly through them. “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you do.”

  A muscle worked in his jaw. “Leave it alone, Nikki. This is police business.”

  “What the hell happened up on Blood Mountain?”

  His lips tightened. “Since you’re here, I have some advice for you.”

  “Good. I’m listening.” She flicked a glance at her recorder silently taping the entire conversation.

  “The next time you stake out someone’s apartment and tail them, you might be a little more discreet.”

  “I guess I should take a lesson on stakeouts from you, right?” she shot back and immediately regretted the dig.

  His jaw clamped. His eyes narrowed and he slowly set his fork down with such precision that she knew he was holding back his rage. “This interview is over.”

  “It never began.”

  “That’s right.” He reached over and pressed a button on the recorder. The tape player clicked off. Reed glared her down.

  Jo picked that moment to return with a Styrofoam box. “Here ya go, hon.”

  Nikki reached for her purse, but Reed’s hand shot across the table, catching her wrist. Strong fingers tightened. “It’s on me.” As quickly as he’d grabbed her, he let go. Turning to the waitress he managed a needle-thin smile. “Add Miss Gillette’s order to my bill.”

  “Will do,” Jo said, her eyes moving quickly to Nikki, then back to Reed. She dropped the receipt onto the table, then turned on her heel and headed for a nearby table where a group of men in hunting coats and hats were settling in.

  Nikki tried to backtrack, to salvage some kind of relationship with the man. “Look, Detective Reed, I’m sorry if we got started on the wrong foot.”

  “We didn’t get started at all.”

  “What is it you dislike about me so?”

  “It’s not personal.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “It’s your profession. I really don’t like any reporters. Any of ’em. They just get in the way.”

  “Sometimes we help. You need the public to be informed.”

  “Rarely. What you really do is rile people up, start making assumptions, scare the hell out of the public, print stories that aren’t always double-checked…it’s a real pain in the ass. But don’t quote me. That’s ‘off the record.’”

  “You just don’t like having watchdogs. The media keeps you honest.”

  “The media is a pain in the ass.” He glanced down at his uneaten meal, frowned, and reached for his wallet. “I changed my mind. You can stay. I’m not hungry anymore.” He slapped a twenty onto the table and slid out of the booth. “Bon appétit!”

  “Hey! Wait a minute.” She took off after him, flying out the door as he strode to his El Dorado. Cold air slapped her in the face as she dashed across the parking lot. He had already unlocked the car when she reached him. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry about the dig about the stakeout,” she apologized. “I blew it. I shouldn’t have brought up what happened in San Francisco. And I know I went too far defending my profession. I know there are reporters that would…sensationalize a story just to make a big splash, okay? I blew it. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I just want this story. I don’t expect you to compromise the investigation. I wouldn’t ask for that. And I don’t expect special consideration, but I want a new angle. I mean, here we are in Savannah and you went all the way upstate to another jurisdiction.”

  “So?”

  “Why? What’s it to you? What’s going on?” He didn’t respond, just stood there. “Look, I want to work with you, not against you,” she tried again, but he just stared at her. It was still dark, rain was collecting on his dark hair and his expression in the bluish glow from the diner’s neon sign was hard. Uncompromising. Damn near pissed off.

  “You people,” he said in a voice so low she barely heard it. “You just never know when to give up, do you?”

  “No more than you do. If you gave up, no cases would ever be solved.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “We both have jobs to do.”

  “That’s right. And I need to get to mine.” He climbed into the huge car, jabbed the keys at the ignition and fired up the engine.

  Furious with herself, Nikki stepped back and watched as he wheeled out of the lot.

  “Great,” she muttered under her breath. “Just damned wonderful. Some kind of investigative reporter you are, Gillette.” Hiking her collar against the rain, she walked back to the bank’s parking lot and slid behind the wheel of her car. So much for getting closer to Reed. That had backfired. Big time. So it was back to square one. Again. But there was a reason Reed was called up to Lumpkin County. Something important. His expertise? His connections? The fact that he’d been born up there? What? She’d checked and double-checked, couldn’t find any reason other than he’d spent a few years there as a child and that lead had fizzled into nothing.

  Fuming, she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and told herself she wasn’t going to figure it out here in the damned empty parking lot. She had some serious digging to do. She pumped the gas and twisted the ignition. As the engine sparked, she looked over her shoulder to back out of her spot when she noticed something move near the hedge surrounding the parking lot, a shadow duck away from the glow of the street lamp.

  Her heart clutched.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror. Nothing.

  Another look over her shoulder showed the hedge undisturbed.

  “It’s nothing,” she told herself just as she caught a glimpse of a man standing on the other side of the hedge, still out of the glow of the street lamp. She couldn’t distinguish his features but knew he was staring at her. Watching her.

  Had he been waiting?

  The same man she’d seen before her meeting with Reed?

  Her throat went dry as she threw the car into reverse. So what if a man had been lingering near the diner? Big deal. It wasn’t a crime and it was damned near rush hour. Dawn was already casting gray light into the city. Maybe the guy was waiting for a ride, looking for a bus, on his way to work…

  Or maybe not.

  There was something about the way he stood, just out of the light, that made him seem different. She’d sensed his eyes upon her. Observing. Her skin crawled instinctively. “Pervert,” she muttered, glancing again at her rearview mirror.

  He was gone.

  Not a trace of him anywhere near the street.

  Vanished swiftly, as if she’d dreamed him.

  “Come on, Nikki. Get a grip.” Maybe her imagination was just working overtime and she saw evil lurking where there was none. All the talk about graves and dead bodies and murder was probably just getting to her. “Oh, that’s good,” she thought aloud. “The would-be crime reporter creeped out because of a guy who was probably just waiting for a bus.” What was wrong with her? One co
nfrontation with Reed and she was suddenly jelly? That wasn’t like her. She rammed the car into gear and drove out of the parking lot. There was no one watching her, following her. It was nothing. Nothing!

  And yet…

  She looked in the mirror once more. Was he there? Just out of the lamplight? Silently spying from the shadowy foliage? Was there a bit of movement?

  Cold sweat appeared on her skin as she stepped on the accelerator.

  A horn blasted.

  She stood on the brakes, narrowly missing a taxi that was roaring by on her right. She hadn’t even seen the cab. Adrenaline pumping, fingers damp on the wheel, she told herself to pull it together. She couldn’t afford to blow the opportunity of cracking this story wide open. Not when she’d waited for it all of her life.

  She gunned it and the hatchback squealed onto the street.

  One last peek at the mirror, but she saw no one. No one at all.

  Run, bitch, The Survivor thought from the dense foliage on the other side of the hedge. Between the leaves he observed the red taillights as Nikki Gillette’s car disappeared around a corner. You’ll never get away. Not from me.

  A thrill skittered down his spine. Anticipation sang through his blood. She was hooked and her interest would ensure more media attention, not just from the rag of a newspaper that she worked for, but from the television and radio stations as well. Not just in that hick town up north, but in Atlanta and here in Savannah as well. The national media would pick it up…yes…

  As he’d expected, Nikki Gillette had tailed Reed to this diner and confronted the cop. From outside the window, The Survivor had watched their exchange. It had gone perfectly, according to plan. Standing in the cold air he’d heard nothing of the conversation, but, from their expressions, and by reading their lips, he’d watched the argument ensue.

  She wanted a scoop.

  Reed wouldn’t tell her a thing.

  Which would spur her into delving deeper. It was her nature. Nikki didn’t like to lose.

  Now, cop and reporter were both involved.

  Perfect.

  Their nerves were already stretched tight.

  The Survivor smiled. Licked his lips with the tip of his tongue.

  For this was just the beginning.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Okay, Cliff, so give,” Nikki said when he’d finally answered his cell phone. She’d spent the morning in the office, catching up as quickly as she could on her other work, leaving a message for her sister, listening to a little office gossip, but for the most part concentrating on the two bodies found in the single grave in the northern Georgia woods. She’d tried all her contacts in Lumpkin County and a friend with the AP who worked out of Atlanta, but what little information had been given to the press from the sheriff’s department was already widespread. It didn’t give her the edge she needed. Now, seated at her desk, doodling on a notepad, she spoke softly, hoping no one, including Trina, would overhear. “What’s happening with the case up in Dahlonega? Why’s Reed involved?”

  “Hell, Nikki, why don’t you ask him?” Cliff was irritated.

  “I tried. This morning. Let’s just say he wasn’t overly communicative.”

  “Sounds like him.”

  “So, why him? Why did he chopper up there? What was the connection?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “But there was a connection.”

  “I said, I can’t—”

  “Why not?”

  He didn’t answer, but she’d guessed the reason when Reed had been sent up to Dahlonega. “Because somehow Reed’s involved. Either with the victim or the killer or he’s a suspect or—”

  “Whoa. Slow down. Don’t overspeculate.”

  “But there has to be a reason. Do you know who the victims are yet?”

  He hesitated.

  “I take that as a yes.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Come on, Cliff. You guys are going to release the names as soon as the next of kin have been notified.”

  “It’ll happen this afternoon.”

  “So, give me a little bit of a head start.”

  He sighed through his nose, and Nikki felt a second’s relief. Cliff always let out his breath before spilling significant beans. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt. There are two women, one older and decomposing badly—we don’t know who she is. The other one is younger, obviously been in the coffin a short while.”

  “How short?”

  “Less than a day.”

  “Who is she?” Nikki asked

  “Her name is Barbara Jean Marx. Goes by Bobbi. Native Savannahian. Look, that’s all I can tell you, really. I’ve got to go.”

  Nikki wrote down the victim’s name. It was a start. “How did she die?”

  Hesitation. Nikki put a question mark by the name.

  “What about the other one?”

  “I’ll leave it at homicide, at least in Bobbi’s case, but I really can’t discuss it any further. It could injure the investigation.”

  “That’s department mumbo jumbo and you know it.” Nikki wrote Reed’s name beside the victims and put another question mark by Who is the other victim? How related?

  “For now, it’s all I can say.”

  Bobbi could tell Cliff wasn’t about to be swayed on the cause of death issue, so she tried another tack. “So, who is she? And I’m not talking about her name.”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like a broken record.”

  “Good.”

  Hearing the finality in his tone and knowing he was about to ring off, she quickly asked, “Why would the department send Reed? Or did the Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Department request him?”

  A beat. No answer. He was clamming up. She had to work fast. “Was it because he lived up there once, or because he’s got some special skills, or just because he was the cop on duty?”

  “Figure it out, Nikki,” Siebert growled. “It ain’t rocket science.” He hung up with a loud, final click.

  “Damn,” she muttered, but tore the piece of paper from her notepad and stuffed it into her purse. She didn’t waste a minute. This was her chance. Her BIG chance. One she wasn’t going to share with Norm Metzger. No way. No how. No matter what Tom Fink wanted. She wouldn’t take a chance that somehow someone in the office might discover what she was researching, so she packed up her laptop, logged out and drove home. Even though she might freeze as the insulation in her turret apartment was nearly nonexistent, she did have cable Internet and a password that would allow her into news archives at the Sentinel and its sister newspaper in Atlanta. Whatever there was to know about Barbara Jean Marx, Nikki would discover it this afternoon, then start the legwork to check out “Bobbi’s” home, her workplace, her friends. And maybe in so doing she’d figure out why the woman was murdered.

  “What do they know up at the sheriff’s department?” Reed asked when McFee entered his office around three. Reed had worked all morning, catching up on other cases, tracking down the lab to see if they’d gotten any latent fingerprints off the note he’d received the other day, calling St. Claire and asking about more information on the victims in the grave. The ME had faxed over the preliminary reports and Reed was reading them now. Everything St. Claire had told him had proved true. Barbara Jean Marx had died of asphyxiation, she had a high blood alcohol level and traces of a sedative, Ativan, in her blood. Her fingers were scraped raw, her knees bruised, her forehead bloodied, presumably from hitting her head on the inside top of the coffin. She’d lost fingernails and toenails while trying to claw her way to freedom. And she’d been about eleven weeks pregnant. His gut clenched as McFee settled into a side chair. “You talked to Baldwin?”

  “A couple of times, but we still haven’t got much more information than we had a couple of days ago,” the big detective admitted. His scowl was more pronounced as he ran a hand over his jaw. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small notepad. “Prescott Jones, the kid who wa
s hurt up at the mountain, he’s still critical. Baldwin went up to talk to him and find out what he saw, but didn’t get much out of him and the doctors and nurses weren’t happy to have anyone disturbing him. The boy’s old man wasn’t any help. Seems to think the kid can sell his story to a tabloid. Baldwin’s still working on him, though. He talked to the other boy.”

  “Delacroix?”

  “Right. But his story hasn’t changed and he can’t remember any more details. There was something about him, though…he seemed to be holding back.”

  “Maybe cops scare him. They do a lot of kids. So the boy clams up rather than get himself into what he thinks will be deeper trouble.”

  “I’ll check with him again.” McFee made a note to himself. “Or maybe the sheriff can get whatever it is out of him.”

  “Maybe,” Reed allowed.

  “I also talked to the lead investigator for the crime scene and they’ve got a serial number on the coffin, along with soil samples. You were right, some of the dirt on the coffin didn’t match the soil where it was found. Too much sand.”

  Boots beating a sharp tattoo announced Morrisette before she appeared in the doorway. Her blond hair projected in all directions and she was dressed head to toe in denim jeans, shirt, and jacket. Along with her snakeskin boots that she’d bought long ago in El Paso. “Did I miss anything?” she asked and offered McFee a smile that could easily be construed as flirty. Jesus, would she never learn?

  “McFee was just filling me in on what they found up north.”

  “The crime scene team got a serial number on the casket and soil that doesn’t match the surrounding dirt.”

  “So, the coffin came from somewhere else.”

  “Looks like,” McFee said. “They’re checking and comparing.”

  Morrisette propped her rear on the windowsill. Behind her, on the other side of the glass, a winter sun was forcing rays through thick clouds. “They might see if it matches the silt around Stonewall Cemetery.”