by Gayle Wilson
“Do you remember a man named Wilford Mays, Judge Barrington? He came before you on an unrelated charge, but it’s possible—”
“I remember Mays,” he interrupted. “Where did you come up with his name?”
“Someone told me he was suspected of being the school bomber in the sixties. I know he was never convicted on that, but isn’t it possible that he might have some involvement in this case?”
“Mays was still in prison when the bombings began.”
Kahler hadn’t told her that. Maybe he didn’t even know. Or maybe Barrington was wrong. Kahler had said Mays had gotten time off for good behavior, so perhaps he had been out when the bombings began. She considered the judge’s choice of words—impersonal and distanced, considering that the bombings had begun with the package sent to Thorne Barrington.
“But not for the others?” she asked. “It’s likely he didn’t act alone on the school bombing. Maybe he has an accomplice.”
“That’s not the usual pattern with mail bombers,” he said. There was a thread of interest in the denial. He was at least considering what she had said.
“Nothing about Jack’s been usual from the start, and Mays is bright.” There was a silence. She waited one heartbeat. Two. “Isn’t he?” she prodded. Fishing now. Hoping he’d talk to her.
“I’d say he’s cunning,” Barrington said. “Shrewd rather than smart.”
Her lips tilted. “I’d like to talk to you about what you remember about his case.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. August, but considering our previous—”
“This time I’ll ring the bell,” she offered, allowing a trace of self-directed mockery into her voice. “And I promise to leave the shades alone,” she added.
When the silence stretched again, she knew she had gone too far. Damn her smart mouth. This wasn’t Kahler, and it wasn’t the time for sarcasm. There was nothing funny about what she’d done to Thorne Barrington.
“I interviewed Hall Draper’s widow,” she interjected into the suddenly frigid silence. She offered the change of subject to make him forget what she’d just said. “I’d like to run the things she told me about her husband by you.”
“Why?”
“To see if anything sounds familiar. I still believe there’s a link between all the victims.” Wrong word, she thought immediately. He was certainly a victim, but she shouldn’t have called him that. At least he was still alive.
“What kind of link?”
“I don’t have a clue,” she admitted truthfully. “Something pretty obscure or somebody would already have picked up on it. I just thought I could tell you what Jackie Draper told me and see if any of it meant anything to you.”
She waited, realizing that he hadn’t said no, so he must be considering it. She closed her eyes, praying, wondering if she could possibly get lucky enough to have him agree to meet her. Despite all the ways she had screwed up, was it possible that he was even thinking about talking to her about this case?
“You’d have to come here, Ms. August.”
She bit her lip to keep her gasp of elation from slipping out. Barrington was going to do it. Meet with her. Talk about Mays. Listen to Jackie Draper’s story. All of it. And he wondered if ehe minded having to come to his house.
“Of course,” she said. “That’s no problem.” She was pleased with how calm she sounded.
“Tomorrow?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Four o’clock.”
“You think Elliot will let me in?” she asked. Teasing again. Automatic. Only, what in the hell she was doing teasing Barrington, especially about her last visit?
“Try ringing the bell,” he suggested, and then the connection was broken. There had been some nuance of amusement in his voice, and she realized she was smiling as she put her phone back on its stand. She couldn’t believe he’d agreed.
“Yes!” she said softly, her voice full of triumph.
She glanced down at the small table on which the phone rested. Not even attempting to fight the urge this time, she opened the drawer and then realized it was empty. The folder containing Thorne Barrington’s pictures was gone. It took a moment for the reality of that to hit her.
Although the drawer wasn’t deep, she pulled it out further, cunning her fingers to the very back. There was no manila folder. She tried to think of the last time she had opened the drawer, tried to remember if she had taken the Barrington file out and had then forgotten to put it back. But despite the fact that she lived alone, the pictures were a forbidden pleasure. She knew she would never have left them out.
Still trying to remember what she could possibly have done with the folder, she switched off the lights in the living room, at the same time turning on the light in the short hallway that led to the bedroom and bath. She walked down the hall, unbuttoning her blouse as she went, becoming aware again for the first time since she’d heard the phone ringing of how exhausted she was.
By the time she reached the bedroom, the blouse was off and she held it loosely folded in her hands. Too tired to find a hanger, she laid the garment across the top of the bedroom chair. She stepped out of her low-heeled pumps as her fingers found the button on the waistband of her skirt. She unzipped it and let it fall, stooping to pick it up and throw it across the chair on top of the folded blouse. She continued to undress, piling her slip, bra and hose on the other garments. She’d straighten up in the morning. That was one advantage of living alone—no one else would see the clutter.
She took a cream-colored sleeveless gown out of her drawer and slipped it on, enjoying the fall of soft cotton over her body. She thought briefly about how good it felt to be home and how wonderful sleeping in her own bed was going to be.
She stacked the sham-covered pillows on the floor beside the chair that held her clothes and then removed the comforter, putting it on top of the pillows. She walked back to the bed, reaching under her pillow to find the top edge of the sheet, pulling it and the lightweight blanket down at the same time.
It took her a moment to realize what was in the bed, lying red and somehow obscene against the smooth white fabric of the bottom sheet. Her hand was still gripping the top sheet and blanket, but it was trembling now. Very slowly she drew them downward, exposing the vivid spill of glittering confetti. The same red confetti that had showered her office the day she’d received the package.
In her mind, unwanted, without logic or reason, out of nowhere a phrase echoed, just as obscene and just as terrifying.
Jack’s back.
Chapter Six
She opened the door, leaving the chain in place until she could be sure it was Kahler. He was more casually dressed than she’d ever seen him, but she’d gotten him out of bed to answer her almost hysterical phone call. He had told her he’d be right over and had ordered her not to touch anything—to stay out of the bedroom and wait until he got there.
She released the chain, opened the door, and then surprised herself by stepping into Kahler’s arms. They closed around her, almost automatically, despite the leather case he held in his right hand. She hadn’t even thought about her action, about what effect it might have on their relationship. She had simply been so glad to see him, so relieved not to be in the apartment alone.
“You’re all right,” he said, his mouth moving against her hair. She could feel the warmth, and she took a deep breath. The first real breath she’d gotten since she’d pulled back the covers to reveal the prankster’s calling card.
“He was here,” she said.
The words were almost a whisper. She still felt sick. She had been since she’d realized all the implications of what she had found. She had read that people whose houses were burglarized felt like this—invaded, violated. She shivered, despite the heat of Kahler’s body still holding her. She found herself wondering if she’d ever really feel safe again.
This was her home, and whoever had sent the package to her office had been here. He had opened drawers, touched her personal pos
sessions. Maybe run his fingers over the soft cotton of the gown she had put on tonight—a hundred years ago—when she had been so glad to be back to the familiar pleasures of home.
“He was here, Kahler. In my apartment,” she said. She wondered if Kahler would understand or if he was too inured by the years he’d dealt with real violations. Suddenly embarrassed, she removed her body from the embrace she had sought.
“He’s not here now, Kate. You’re all right. That’s all that’s important right now.”
She nodded, knowing he was right.
“Where’s the bedroom?” he asked, and despite the situation, she felt her mouth react to the question, the corners lifting.
“What? No foreplay?” she asked, trying to pretend she wasn’t devastated by this, trying to again be what she had always thought herself—a strong woman, able to joke about the sometimes dangerous or disturbing elements of her job.
Kahler wasn’t buying the act. His eyes held hers a moment, and then, still unsmiling, he broke the contact, glancing around the apartment. He moved to the doorway of the hall which led to the bedroom and bath. She trailed him reluctantly.
He walked into the bedroom and stopped, looking at the spread of confetti, the metallic surfaces of the scattered pieces catching the reflections from the overhead light. From this angle, the metal bits looked exactly like the ones that had fallen onto the carpet that day. Like freshly spilled drops of blood.
Kate stood in the doorway, watching Kahler make his careful observations. He hadn’t touched anything, and he had moved around the room as little as possible.
“The bed was made?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Notice anything different about the way it was made?”
“I wasn’t looking for anything different, but…I don’t think there was anything—”
“Anything missing?” he interrupted.
Just my collection of Barrington’s pictures, she thought. My fantasy. My secret life. Somehow she couldn’t imagine confessing that loss, that particular violation, to Kahler. There was nothing the intruder could learn about the case from the folder he’d taken. Nothing beyond the fact that she was hung up on looking at pre-Jack photographs of Thorne Barrington, she thought, mocking her own obsession.
“No,” she lied. “At least nothing I know of.”
“I’ll dust a few of the likeliest areas for prints, although truthfully I’ll be surprised if we find any. Thanks to the tube, everybody knows enough to wear latex gloves. Unless you want to wait for the lab boys to come out and do it tomorrow?”
He turned to look at her, his eyes carefully impersonal now, although they had touched quickly over the smooth skin exposed by the low neck of her gown before they had lifted to her face.
“No,” she said. “You do it. If you will. I just want to clean that up. Just get it out of my bed.”
“Give me another set of sheets, and I’ll take care of it.”
“I don’t want you to have to—”
“I’d like to take this set in. Test them for any physical evidence. We might get lucky. While I’m at it, I’ll put the clean sheets on the bed.”
She nodded again, grateful for the offer, however he wanted to justify it. When she brought sheets back into the room, Kahler had already begun dusting for prints.
“You can put them on the foot of the bed,” he instructed.
She deposited the small stack and then looked around the room. “Sorry about the mess,” she said, gesturing toward the chair where she’d piled her clothes and the bedding on the floor.
Kahler glanced up from what he was doing, and he smiled at her for the first time. “I grew up in a three-room house with my mother and sister. You don’t have to apologize for the feminine clutter, August. It just makes me feel at home.”
She returned his smile, wondering what Kahler had been like as a boy, what his early life had been, before he’d joined the military. He had told her almost nothing beyond the fact that he couldn’t imagine having grown up surrounded by luxury as Thorne Barrington had, that he had not been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. And, of course, neither had she.
“You don’t have to stay,” Kahler added.
Kate realized suddenly that she didn’t want to. She wanted out of this room, away from the violation. Kahler seemed to be very perceptive tonight where her feelings were concerned.
“Thanks,” she said, and she turned and left him alone.
IT TOOK KAHLER maybe twenty minutes to finish. Kate sat on the couch in the living room while she waited, images of someone rummaging through her belongings invading her mind. Occasionally she thought about the missing pictures, wondering why he would have taken those. It didn’t make sense. Unless…
Resolutely, she banished that thought. Barrington wouldn’t want his own pictures. No one had believed her idea that the judge was involved with the package that had been sent to her office. Both Kahler and Lew had discounted that scenario. It was somehow even more far-fetched to imagine a respected jurist breaking into her apartment to throw confetti between her sheets.
She hadn’t told Kahler that Barrington had called her or that she had an appointment with him tomorrow, and she didn’t intend to. She had already confessed that she wasn’t completely unbiased when it came to the judge. It was all too complicated to explain, especially with everything else that was going on.
“All done,” Kahler said. “You want me to stay a while?”
He was standing in the doorway of the hall. She had the sudden, inexplicable feeling that he might have been there a few minutes, silently watching her.
“I’m not quite that big a coward,” she denied.
“Sometimes having company helps,” Kahler suggested.
“It’s just the thought that he was here.” She had said that before, but somehow it was the one thing she couldn’t get past. He had been in her home. He had touched her things, had run his hands over the sheets of her bed. Violation She shivered.
“Put the chain on. And get that lock tomorrow. Then if he wants in again, he’ll have to break the door down. You just made it easy for him, Kate.”
“I know,” she admitted. “Who do you think could have—”
“Whoever sent the package. We’ve already played this game. I don’t have any answers for you. We’ll let the lab see if they can find anything. There’s nothing more I can do tonight.”
“Thanks for coming,” she said. She stood up, aware for the first time of the sheerness of her gown. Not that Kahler had revealed he’d noticed.
“I don’t like this, August. I don’t like the way it feels. Usually creeps who pull stunts like this are harmless. But occasionally…”
“Occasionally, they do more than terrorize,” she finished for him. She was very well aware of the dangers of stalkers.
“You be careful,” Kahler ordered. “You’re smart. Don’t take any chances. And forget the series. Let it drop. It’s not worth the risk. Not for some stupid story.” His voice was suddenly passionate. No longer the detached professional. Apparently, this felt personal to Kahler also.
“It’s my job, Kahler. If I run at the first sign of trouble, at the first indication that someone doesn’t like what I write, then I’m not much of a reporter.”
“Maybe they’ll put that in your obituary. She was a hell of a reporter, but she didn’t have sense enough to know when to leave it alone.”
“If you’re trying to scare me, I want you to know that you’re doing a hell of a fine job.” Her voice was tight with anger. He was supposed to be comforting, protecting her from this maniac, and instead he was just making it worse.
“Good,” he said. “Get the lock, August. First thing tomorrow. Be late for work if you have to. Remember what they say.” His voice was just as hard as hers, his eyes challenging.
“What do they say, Kahler? I know you’re dying to tell me.”
“Better late than never,” he said. He stalked across the room and opened the door, every mo
tion indicating anger.
She watched him, her eyes glazed with sudden moisture. She hated it, but it always happened. She always cried when she got mad. Kahler was supposed to be her friend. He wasn’t supposed to tell her it was too dangerous to keep doing her job. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear from Detective Byron Kahler.
“By the way,” he said, turning just before he stepped through the opened door. She blinked, determined not to let him have the satisfaction of seeing her cry, but still his features were slightly blurred. “To me, August, foreplay won’t consist of putting confetti between your sheets.”
He closed the door behind him, the noise sharp in the confines of the small room. She opened her mouth slightly, almost the comical dropped jaw of the sitcoms, and then realized she had nothing to say. Even if she had been able to think of a comeback, he had timed it so it was far too late to deliver it.
THE HEAT WAS SHIMMERING off the pavement again. The members of the construction crew across the street were at least pretending to work, but somehow all the jobs they had found to do today were in the shade. Kate didn’t blame them. The bank clock she’d passed on her way to the Barrington mansion had read 102, and it was probably ten degrees higher than that in the exposed upper stories of the dilapidated house they were renovating.
She followed the judge’s instructions, ringing the bell. Her lips curved as she remembered the comment on which he’d ended their conversation last night. She had thought a lot about his tone. There was no doubt it had contained amusement. It was the first time in her encounters with Barrington that she had been allowed a glimpse of the man reflected in those old photos.
Her smile faded when she remembered the fate of the pictures. She had also thought long and hard about taking Kahler’s advice, but she could no more have cancelled this appointment today than she could have confessed to the detective what she had confirmed during the sleepless hours of last night-that the only thing missing from her apartment was her secret collection of Thorne Barrington’s pictures.
“Miss August.” The old man had arrived, his trembling hands already beginning to deal with the gate.