The Morning After

  It would be a good change to move away, make new friends, connect with people who weren’t related to or had known Andrew.

  A stab of sadness cut through her. She’d loved him so much and he’d broken up with her, after vowing to adore her, after asking her to marry him, after learning that he’d been rejected by Harvard. Why? Had he thought he couldn’t measure up to what she’d wanted in a husband, or had it been more…another woman?

  Who knew? Who would ever know? The sorry part of it was she doubted she would ever love a man the way she’d so passionately and ardently fallen for Andrew Whitmore Gillette. She’d given him her heart, her virginity, and her self-respect. A part of her figured she’d never get any of them back.

  “Oh, stop it,” she muttered, angry at herself. “All those years of counseling and you still feel this way? Get ahold of yourself.”

  Light-headed from the martinis, she noticed for the first time how thin the traffic was, how deserted the street. Not that it mattered. She was so close to the class. As she rounded the final corner, she spied the lights of the gym burning warmly in the night. Beacons in the empty, foggy street, the patches of light from the windows were a bit blurry, probably a combination of the surrounding mist and the alcohol creating a warm fuzz in her brain. Somewhere in the distance she heard the sound of Christmas carols and she was reminded again that it would soon be Christmas, the time of year when she’d fallen so head over heels in love with Andrew Gillette. Why she hadn’t stopped thinking about him, she didn’t understand. What was it that Nikki wanted to tell her about her brother, now, a dozen years after his death?

  Squinting, she thought she could make out Jake’s SUV, which was parked under a street lamp. Simone grinned. Jake Vaughn wasn’t the first man she’d been interested in after Andrew. Since Andrew’s death, she’d dated, gone with and slept with a few other guys. None had captivated her the way Nikki’s brother had, but Jake had possibilities. Serious possibilities. He certainly was the most challenging man she’d met in a long, long while. If he would take the bait and show some interest in her, she might not have to move after all.

  She increased her pace. The gym was only a block away—just past the alley. She heard a strange sound, a hiss, like something slicing through the air. Turning her head toward the windowpanes of a darkened storefront, she saw her reflection and…something else…the shadowy, menacing figure of a man lurking between two parked cars. He sprang upward, pulling hard against something.

  A rope?

  No! She bolted. Adrenaline pumped through her blood. Fear shot through her brain. The man jerked hard. That same moment, her shin encountered something taut and invisible and thin enough to slice through her jogging pants and cut into her flesh. Pain screamed up her leg.

  “Oooh!” she cried, pitching forward. The ground rushed up at her. She put out an arm to catch herself and hit the ground hard.

  Snap!

  Agony jettisoned up her arm. Her bag flew out of her hand to land on the pavement.

  “Oh, God!” Whatever had caught her feet was tangling her, cutting into her flesh, a sharp spiderweb snaring her, eating into her. And her arm. It ached so badly she nearly passed out. “Help!” she screamed, writhing in agony. “Someone help me!”

  “Shut up!” a deep voice snarled. A sweaty palm covered her mouth and she tried to bite, to roll away. To escape. But the more she squirmed, the more enmeshed she became. Oh, God, who was he? Why was he doing this? Twisting her neck, she caught a glimpse of his face in the darkness…a face she recognized. The guy in the restaurant…but even so, now she knew who he was. Realized he wasn’t a stranger at all.

  Oh, no! Oh, Jesus, no! Vainly she tried to free herself, but he was strong, determined. Muscles like steel, holding her against the wet sidewalk, his body pinning hers. Writhing, she prayed for help. Surely someone would see her…come to her aid…other people should be going into the gym…or driving by. Please, please, help me!

  “Remember me,” he whispered against her ear, and she felt terror burrow deep into her heart. “Remember what you did to me? It’s time to pay.” Then she spied the needle, a fine, thin weapon glinting evilly in the fog-shrouded night.

  Her blood turned to ice.

  No!

  Vainly she tried to kick, to swing at him, to escape whatever horror he had in mind, but she couldn’t scoot away and she watched in sheer terror as he plunged the vile needle deep into her shoulder.

  Simone fought, but his weight pinned her down and her arms were suddenly heavy and useless, her trapped legs unable to move. Panic tore through her as the sluggishness invaded all her body parts. She tried vainly to scream but couldn’t. Her tongue was thick, her vocal cords immobile.

  The streetlights dimmed, the fog thickened in her mind, and merciful blackness dragged her under.

  God be with me, she thought desperately and only hoped that death would come swiftly.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Wait up!”

  Reed, jacket collar hiked around his neck, was leaving the station. He didn’t break stride but Morrisette dashed through the puddle-strewn lot and around two parked cruisers to catch up with him.

  “Jesus, what crappy weather,” she growled.

  Night had already fallen, streetlights glowing through the thickening fog, headlights few and far between. Rush hour was over; traffic no longer snarled and slowed. “Look, Reed,” Morrisette said as they reached his El Dorado, “I thought about it and I guess I came on a little strong this morning.”

  “You guess right.” His keys were already in his hand.

  “So, you’re pissed, right?” She was reaching into her purse, digging, presumably, for her pack of Marlboros.

  “You’re batting a thousand.” Unlocking the car, he didn’t bother to glance in her direction.

  “Hey, I’m just doing my job.”

  “I know.” He swung the car door open and the interior light flashed on. “So, do it. You don’t need to apologize.”

  “Come on, Reed, when did you get to be so thin-skinned?” She found a crumpled pack and shook out a cigarette. “You know what the drill is.”

  “Was there something you wanted to tell me?”

  “Yeah.” She clicked her lighter to the end of her filter tip and drew in hard. “First of all, we haven’t got much out of Nikki Gillette’s apartment. No fingerprints or any other hard evidence.” Morrisette blew out a cloud of smoke. It dissipated into the gathering fog. “She was right. The door and windows weren’t forced, so we have to assume whoever got in had a key—he either had it made, stole it, or borrowed it from someone who had one, most likely Ms. Gillette.

  “The microphone we found in her bedroom is identical to the two we found in the coffins and we’re checking with stores and distributors who deal in all that electronic shit, including on-line dealers. All the mikes are wireless, kind of sophisticated, so we figure our guy is probably a techno geek. We’re looking for anyone who bought at least three of that brand and make of microphone and the listening devices that go with them.”

  “Good.”

  “So, I guess I’m telling you that we’re done searching her apartment. We’ve got all we can get from there.” Morrisette took another drag. “Siebert called her already. Gave her the green light. She can move back in.”

  “Why tell me?”

  “Because I thought you’d want to know.” She lifted a brow as smoke drifted from her nostrils. “Right?”

  “Yeah.” A cruiser rolled in and parked two slots down from the Caddy.

  “And there’s something else.” He heard the tension underlying her words; realized she was about to give him bad news. She glanced back at the station before meeting his eyes. “The DNA results on Barbara Jean Marx’s baby came back.”

  His shoulders tightened.

  “It confirmed the blood test.”

  “Great.” He felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut. Not that he hadn’t expected it, but this was so final. So unequivocal. A blood test left a little
doubt. DNA did not.

  She looked at him hard, her eyes squinting against the darkness. “If it’s worth anything, I’m sorry.”

  His jaw slid to one side. Cold air collected on his face.

  “I know. It’s a bitch.” Morrisette flicked her cigarette onto the pavement. Its red tip glowed for a second before sizzling and dying in a puddle. A brief little light. Extinguished quickly. “Hang in there.” Without so much as a glance over her shoulder, she walked toward the back door of the station.

  Standing in the parking lot in the night, Reed felt suddenly alone. Empty inside. Hollow.

  He shoved his hands into the pockets of his raincoat and stared up at the heavens. Above the glow from the city lights, there was nothing but cloud cover. He should have experienced something more than this gnawing vacuum within him, something akin to loss. But how can you lose something you never really had?

  The baby hadn’t been planned. Nor had it been wanted. It would have complicated his life immeasurably and yet…and yet he experienced a deep-seated desolation that would only be assuaged by vengeance. That, at least, he could fix. He planned on finding the son of a bitch who had done this and stringing the bastard up by his miserable balls.

  Climbing behind the wheel of his El Dorado, he jabbed his keys into the ignition. A look in the rearview mirror reflected haunted eyes that were dry but seething with pent-up anger, a beard-darkened jaw that was set in stone, lips that folded over his teeth in newfound determination.

  “Shit,” he growled. “Goddamned son of a bitch!” He threw the car into gear and backed up, then rammed the gearshift into drive. He punched the accelerator. The Caddy shot out of the parking lot and onto the foggy street.

  Reed considered stopping by the local watering hole for a drink or two or six. Tonight would be a great night to get blotto and have the barkeep pour him into a cab. Jack Daniels sounded like a pretty damned good friend.

  But Jack couldn’t help.

  It wouldn’t change a damned thing.

  When Reed woke up with a hangover pounding at his skull tomorrow morning, Bobbi Jean would still be dead. The baby would still never have had a chance to breathe a single breath. And Reed would have to live with the fact that somehow, some way, their deaths were his fault. He was the connection. The damned Grave Robber was talking to him. And killing with ease.

  But what about Roberta Peters?

  How is she connected to you?

  He remembered walking through her home and sensed something…a feeling he couldn’t identify. Like déjà vu, but that wasn’t quite it. An unformed idea nagged at him and wouldn’t gel…What the hell was it—something to do with Nikki Gillette? Had Nikki written an article on Roberta Peters? Known her? There was only one way to find out.

  He eased off the gas and maneuvered the big car through the city streets, past shops bedecked with Christmas greenery and a few pedestrians on the sidewalks. At the offices of the Sentinel he found a parking space near the employee lot. Nikki Gillette’s Subaru was parked near a short hedge. So she was working late. Again. A fact he’d learned long ago when she’d dogged him on other cases. Ambitious to a fault, she spent more time at the newspaper than at home. But she wouldn’t work all night. Rather than be seen in the offices of the Sentinel where he could again be accused of being the police department’s leak, he decided to wait outside. There was already enough speculation about him as it was. Morrisette wasn’t the first cop to suggest he might be the rat who was filling the press with inside information.

  Last summer he’d been a damned hero solving the Montgomery case, and now, less than six months later, he was under suspicion of being a snitch. A classic case of damned if you do and goddamned if you don’t.

  He slid the seat back, stretching his legs, and waited, his gaze glued to the front door as people drifted in and out of the brick building where the offices of the Sentinel were housed. As it was late, more people left the building than walked inside.

  Reed recognized a few faces. Norm Metzger, wrapped in a wool coat and scarf, drove away in a Chevy Impala while Tom Fink tooled off in a restored vintage Corvette. A kid he recognized as Fink’s nephew…what was his name? Deeter, that was it, Kevin Deeter, arrived in a truck with a canopy and walked into the offices. He wore an oversize Braves jacket and a baseball cap pulled low over his face. Reed watched the kid and noted that Deeter paused just outside of the light mounted over the front door, then fiddled with a cassette and donned earphones. He jammed the cassette into a pocket of his baggy jeans, then pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  He was an oddball.

  But the city was filthy with nutcases of one kind or another.

  Reed settled onto his back and wondered why the Grave Robber was communicating with Nikki Gillette. He had half an ear turned to the police band that he kept at a low volume. What was the connection? Did the killer inherently know that she was hungry, that she was determined to make a name for herself? Had he been watching her? Or did he know her personally?

  Condensation collected on the windshield.

  What was the significance of twelve?

  Gaze never sliding from the doorway, he thought of all the combinations he’d come up with during the past few days. Twelve what?

  Months in the year?

  Hours in a day? Or conversely, hours in a night?

  He bit his lip, eyes narrowing.

  Apostles?

  Doughnuts in a dozen?

  Members of a jury?

  Signs of the zodiac?

  Inches in a foot?

  One, two, buckle my shoe.

  Three, four, lock the door.

  Five, six, pick up sticks.

  And so forth…. What was the twelfth part?

  Eleven, twelve,

  Dig and delve.

  Was that right? Hell, it had been years since he’d thought of that. Delve for what?

  For bodies in coffins.

  He zeroed in on that. Maybe there was something to the old nursery rhyme…or maybe not. The killer hadn’t mentioned it in any of his pathetic communiques.

  A group of six carolers strolled by, harmonizing on “Silent Night.” Christmas lights twinkled in the shrubbery surrounding the buildings. Men dressed in Santa suits rang bells and collected for charity on the street corners.

  Christmas.

  Could that be it?

  The twelve days of Christmas?

  They started on December twenty-fifth and ran to January sixth, Epiphany—or at least he thought so. It had been a long while since he’d gone to Sunday school, hadn’t heard a bit of Bible instruction since he was a kid up near Dahlonega. But he was fairly certain that was right.

  How did the carol about the twelve days go?

  Twelve lords a-leaping, no, no wrong. Twelve drummers drumming. That was it. Twelve damned drummers. But, so what? Big deal. What did drummers have to do with anything?

  Before he could analyze the song, he spied Nikki Gillette as she strode through the glass door with a slim black woman Reed didn’t recognize. They paused under the building’s overhang, Nikki hiking up the collar of a tan raincoat that cinched tight around her small waist, her friend adjusting an umbrella.

  Nikki’s face was alive. Animated. Beautiful in a way that disturbed Reed. She was talking wildly as the wind blew her red-blond hair around her face. Together the women hurried to the parking lot, then got into separate cars. The black woman’s Volkswagen Jetta sped away quickly while Nikki’s hatchback took a little while to start. Once the Subaru kicked into gear, Nikki hit the throttle full-bore and barely stopped before entering the street.

  Reed followed.

  He had no trouble keeping up with Nikki’s silver car, nor did he try to hide the fact that he was tailing her down the narrow streets leading to her apartment, through the historic district, past large homes with raised porches, tall windows, and ornate grillwork festooned with garlands and wreaths. Her little car bounced down cobblestone streets and paved roads until she pulled into th
e alley behind her apartment house.

  Reed parked behind her, turning off his headlights as she opened her car door. “Well, well, well. Detective Reed. My new best friend. You know, for years you wouldn’t even return my calls and now, here you are in the flesh. Again. You weren’t kidding about this private bodyguard stuff, were you?”

  “I rarely ‘kid.’”

  “I’ve noticed. But you might want to give it a try.” She winked at him and offered the hint of a dimple, which was nearly his undoing. “Lighten up.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said as if she didn’t believe it, but even in the darkness, he noticed that her eyes twinkled a bit as she baited him. Flirted with him.

  Don’t even think this way. This is Nikki Gillette you’re thinking about. Ronald Gillette’s daughter. A hungry reporter always looking for an angle and a story.

  She pushed open the gate and it creaked upon old hinges. “Detective Morrisette wouldn’t give me any information about what’s going on with the investigation.”

  See, what did I tell you? Always on the job. Don’t let yourself get involved, Reed.

  “I don’t think there is anything. We’re still checking things out.”

  “You, too? I thought you were off—”

  “Let’s not go into that,” he suggested. They passed by a fountain that gurgled near the bole of a huge magnolia tree.

  “There you are!” Reed recognized Fred Cooper, the landlord. An oval-shaped man with a falsetto voice, Fred bustled around the corner. His nose was too big for his face and his rimless glasses were a little tilted over the bridge of a small nose. Reed was reminded of all of the pictures he’d seen of Humpty-Dumpty. “I wanted to talk to you.” Thin lips pursed.

  “What is it, Fred?” Nikki paused at the bottom step. “You remember Detective Reed.”

  He stopped dead in his tracks. “Yes. Oh.” Some of his gumption evaporated. “Don’t tell me there’s more trouble!”