Superstition

by Karen Robards

  So she’d done her best to construct her life so that it held as little turbulence as possible, occasional visits to her mother notwithstanding.

  Before tonight, she’d never felt even the tiniest bit lonely.

  But now, sitting on the bed in her clean, neat, orderly apartment with only her computer and the TV for company, suddenly she did. She didn’t know what it was, exactly. Maybe Karen’s untimely death and the knowledge that except for the vagaries of fate, her own life could have ended then, too, had suddenly made her conscious of how short life really was. Maybe what she was feeling were the reverberations of that night’s fear, lingering like a bad aftertaste once the danger was over. Maybe she had just been exposed to one too many ghosts. But for whatever reason, she was feeling un-characteristically on edge.

  It would have been nice to have somebody to talk to, she reflected—somebody to discuss the e-mails with, for example, or to share the shock and fear and grief of the last week, or even just to keep her company.

  Somebody special.

  What she was missing, she concluded as she thought about it, was some kind of significant other in her life. A steady boyfriend. A live-in lover. A man.

  She imagined someone tall, lean, and muscular, black-haired, totally hot . . .

  Joe Franconi.

  She made the ID in an instant. Then, annoyed at herself, she banished the image from her mind.

  Maybe, she thought wryly as she focused on the e-mails with renewed determination, she should get a cat.

  “. . . love the show,” gushed the e-mail she was reading.

  Smiling a little, Nicky scrolled down to the next.

  “. . . think Leonora James is amazing. Where can I get in touch with her?”

  That one she would forward to her mother—or, rather, to Marisa, as Leonora didn’t do e-mail.

  “. . . do more shows like that? Paranormal stuff is so in.”

  Glad you think so, Nicky thought, and clicked on the next message.

  Never forget the rule of three

  Three times will death come to thee

  Three who were connected in daily life

  Will walk close together into death’s dark night.

  Nicky blinked and read the e-mail again. Slowly.

  No salutation, no signature, nothing except the rhyme itself.

  Then she looked at the sender’s name.

  Lazarus508.

  And felt her heart start to pound.

  Lazarus—the dead man reborn. And 508 could only stand for May eighth—the day Karen had been murdered.

  She realized it with a thrill of horror: The message almost certainly had been sent by the killer.

  THE ONLY TIME when sleep steadfastly eluded him was when he desperately needed it. There was irony in there somewhere, Joe knew, but he was too damn tired to care. This was Thursday—a glance at the digital clock glowing from the cable box atop his TV, and he amended that to Friday, because it was now forty-three minutes past twelve—and since Sunday night, he had been working practically around the clock. Everybody was on his ass, from Vince growling at him to solve the case yesterday to little old ladies corralling him in the street to ask things like, “Do you think I should get a dog?” to reporters of various stripes and persuasions, who seemed to have seized Karen Wise’s murder with all its sensational aspects as an antidote to what must obviously be a slow news week. Tonight, he’d said to hell with it shortly after eleven, and had come home to fix himself canned chili and hot dogs, grab a shower, and roll into bed.

  Fifteen minutes ago, fed up with lying there in the dark, counting possible killers instead of sheep, he’d rolled right back out again. Now he was sprawled on his couch, channel-surfing, hoping to clear his mind enough so that sleep would come.

  The Tonight Show . . . Letterman . . . a Seinfeld rerun . . . CNN (hell, no, the current state of the world was not conducive to sleep) . . . Comedy Central . . .

  His cell phone rang. As it was in the pocket of his pants and his pants were draped across the chair in his bedroom, the sound he heard was more like a muffled bleating. He got up, hotfooted it in bare feet and boxers across the living room’s hardwood floor to the larger of the house’s two bedrooms, stubbed his toe on the jamb, and limped, cursing, to the far corner of the dark bedroom where his ancient Barcalounger reigned supreme. Grabbing his pants, he fished out the insistent phone and snapped it open.

  “Joe Franconi,” he growled into it, pissed about his toe and his inability to fall asleep and the generally sucky turn his life had taken lately, and not caring if he sounded like it.

  “Um, hi.” The woman on the other end of the phone sounded slightly hesitant. “Did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”

  “I was awake.” He was sitting in the Barcalounger now, his ankle resting on his knee as he massaged his sore toe. The only light in the whole house was the faint blue glow of the TV in the living room, and the corner where he sat was as dark as a cave. The tiny air-conditioning unit that he had personally bought and installed in the bedroom window—why no one on Pawleys Island seemed to have heard of central air was a continuing mystery to him—rattled nearby. “What can I do for you?”

  “This is Nicky Sullivan.”

  Nicky Sullivan. He’d been doing his best not to think about her since he’d left her mother’s house early Monday morning.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “I know you’re working on Karen’s murder, and I thought I ought to let you know that I just found a weird e-mail.”

  He tried not to picture her—red hair, satiny skin, slim, supple body—and failed miserably. It was the middle of the night—she’d be dressed for bed. An instant image of her in a slinky black nightie with her hair hanging all smooth and shining to her shoulders and her full, red lips pouting at him popped into his head. It took the self-discipline of a Jedi master to banish it. Recalling that the only time he’d actually seen her ready for bed, she’d been wearing a ponytail and a granny robe in antacid pink should have helped. It didn’t.

  The sad part was, she’d looked sexy, even in that.

  “Oh, yeah?” he said.

  “Yeah. Do you want me to read it to you?”

  “Sure.” And never mind that the husky cadence of her voice made him think of about a hundred and one other uses for her lushly beautiful mouth.

  “ ‘Never forget the rule of three/Three times will death come to thee/Three who were connected in daily life/Will walk close together into death’s dark night.’ ”

  Joe straightened in the chair. His foot hit the floor. He’d been casting about for some way to get his mind out of the gutter, and she’d just supplied it.

  “You want to read that to me one more time?”

  Nicky complied. Joe could feel the way-too-familiar tingle of adrenaline start to burn through his veins. Excitement had always been his drug of choice. Once he’d lived for it, for the thrill of the chase, the danger of discovery, the rush of knowing that death lay right around the next wrong turn.

  All that was behind him now, but there was nothing he could do to stop his body’s long-conditioned response.

  “The sender was Lazarus508,” she continued when he apparently didn’t respond fast enough to suit her. “You know, Lazarus, like from the Bible? He was dead, and came back to life. And 508—May eighth? The day Karen was killed.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I get it. Did you send a reply?”

  “N-no.”

  “Good. Don’t. Don’t do anything with it until I’ve had time to think about it a little. Save it, but leave it alone. Where are you?”

  “In my apartment. In Chicago.” She sounded slightly impatient. “Does it matter?”

  “It might.” Joe’s head rested back against the cool slick Naugahyde, and his gaze slid to the window. The mini-blinds were closed, but through the slats, he could see slivers of starry sky. “If that was sent by the guy who did this, and from the sound of it, it may very well have been, you realize that this would be the second time he�
��s contacted you directly?”

  A beat passed.

  “So what does that mean?” Her voice held a sliver of uncertainty now.

  “Nothing good,” Joe said grimly. “I’m glad you’re in Chicago. How’d he get your e-mail address?”

  “I don’t know. From the show’s website, I guess.”

  “Your physical address wouldn’t be on there, would it?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good. You just now got the e-mail?”

  “I just now found it. It was sent on Monday, at three-seventeen a.m. I haven’t checked my e-mail since”—she hesitated briefly—“Sunday.”

  “Monday at three-seventeen a.m.,” Joe mused. “That’s only a few hours after the murder. You were still on Pawleys Island at the time it was sent, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And we had your cell phone.” He’d confiscated her phone, with its original message, as evidence, just as he had the clothes she’d been wearing at the time of the attack. She hadn’t objected. He’d gotten the impression that she would rather have carried a snake around in her purse than keep that phone with her after she’d heard the message that the perp had left for her on it, and the clothes had been torn and bloody, unusable. “So e-mail was probably the easiest way for him to get in touch with you at that particular time.”

  “I guess.”

  “The question is, who knew we had your phone?”

  There was a pause.

  “I don’t know. Lots of people. My family, probably most of the staff on the show, whoever knew in the police department—it wasn’t a secret.”

  “No.” In retrospect, it probably would have been better to have made it one. Too late.

  “You have a new phone now, right?” With a new number, while they monitored the old one in case the perp should call her again. So far, no luck.

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing?” Obviously, she would have told him if there had been, but . . .

  “No.”

  Joe was silent as he turned various possibilities over in his mind.

  “You understood what the message was saying, right?” she said after a moment. He could hear the anxiety in her voice. “He’s planning to kill three people who are connected, and the murders will happen close together. It’s like before—Tara Mitchell and her friends.”

  “I understood that.” His response was faintly dry.

  “He’s already murdered Karen. So that means . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “One down, two to go,” Joe finished for her.

  “Yes,” she said. He could hear her breathing. “I think . . . I think I was meant to be the second victim.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Is that why he’s contacting me?” The words came out in a rush. “Do you think those messages mean he’s going to come after me again?”

  That was a hard one to answer. She sounded scared. His natural protective instincts—and he was surprised to discover that he still had any—made him want to assure her that she was home free, out of the woods, safe. Unfortunately, honesty wouldn’t let him. “Three who were connected in daily life” implied that the other two victims would know the first. “Close together”—hell, what did that mean? As a time frame, it was vague. But Nicky had been attacked within minutes of the first killing. . . . By accident, because she had stumbled across the crime scene at just the wrong moment, or by design? There was no way to be sure. But one thing he was sure of: If the message was legitimate—and that was a big if—Nicky had reason to be concerned. On the other hand, since she was safely out of the way, there was no reason to confirm what she already knew and in the process possibly scare her senseless.

  “Maybe,” he said. “I’m not an expert on nutcase killers.”

  There was the briefest of pauses.

  “Great,” she said.

  Something about her tone made him smile.

  “From everything I’ve been able to learn, though, these kinds of perps tend to operate within a comfort zone. They choose victims within at the most a few hours’ drive from their home. If we assume that this is the same guy who killed those three girls fifteen years ago—and that’s assuming a lot at this point—then I feel pretty safe in saying that he’s from the local area. In other words, I don’t think you have to worry about him showing up in Chicago anytime soon.”

  “Unless you’re wrong.”

  There was that tone again. It wasn’t quite sarcasm, but it was close.

  “I gotta admit, that’s always a possibility.” He couldn’t help it. He was smiling again. “Are you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I suggest you keep your doors locked.”

  “Oh, thanks. I wouldn’t have thought of that one.”

  He laughed out loud. “I really do think you’re safe. Chicago’s a long way away, and as far as I’ve ever heard, jet-setting serial killers are pretty rare.”

  A beat passed.

  “So you think this is a serial killer?”

  “At this point, it’s kind of looking that way.”

  “So why is he contacting me?” The undertone of fear was back in her voice, and it effectively banished his smile.

  Again, he wanted to reassure her. Again, he couldn’t.

  “I don’t know. Some of these guys like to brag. Maybe that’s what he’s doing. Maybe he chose you because of the TV thing: You know, he’s seen you on TV and he feels a connection. Or maybe he feels a connection to you because he targeted you and you got away.”

  As he spoke, Joe caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye, and automatically glanced toward the opposite side of the bedroom. A shadow, slightly denser than the rest, seemed to take on a vaguely human form as it slid through the bedroom doorway before vanishing into the living room. Joe grimaced, then deliberately looked up at the ceiling just so he wasn’t watching shadows anymore. Ignoring things he didn’t want to see was getting to be an art with him.

  “Or maybe he thinks I can identify him.”

  “There’s that.”

  She made an impatient sound. “Do you have any idea at all about who might be doing this?”

  “Statistically, serial killers are overwhelmingly white males in their thirties and forties. Other than that, the field is wide open.”

  “What are you doing, reading up on it?” She sounded vaguely scandalized.

  “Google’s a wonderful thing.”

  “You’re Googling serial killers?” Okay, there was no vague about it now. She was definitely scandalized.

  “It’s a place to start.”

  “You’re joking—aren’t you?” There was the tiniest note of uncertainty in the last two words that told him that she was not entirely sure. Since he wasn’t joking, at least not entirely, he chose to leave the matter ambiguous.

  “Maybe. Think you could send me a copy of that e-mail?”

  “Yes.” She sounded relieved, as if she’d taken his maybe as reassurance. “What’s your e-mail address?”

  Joe told her. Then, because he got the sense that she was getting ready to end the conversation and he wanted, however stupidly, to keep her talking just a little bit longer, he asked, “How’s the head?”

  “Better. I’ve got a black eye.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Picturing it, he frowned. “What about the knife wound?”

  “It’s healing. It itches, though.”

  “That’s a good sign.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “You back at work yet?”

  “Yes.”

  There didn’t seem to be a lot more to say. And he wasn’t doing himself any favors by trying to prolong the conversation. She might be what the before part of him wanted, but she wasn’t what the after part knew he needed. Anyway, she was in Chicago, and he was stuck down here in paradise.

  End of story.

  “Well, I’ll be watching for you on TV.”

  “Thanks.”

  Just when the pause stretched ou
t to the point when Joe knew it was time to say good-bye and hang up, she spoke again.

  “Really, how’s the investigation going?”

  Really, he’d told her the truth the first time. “Okay.”

  “Has the FBI gotten involved? Or anybody like that?”

  The saying about hope springs eternal popped into his mind. Thanks to shows like Law and Order and CSI, everybody always thought that once a major crime, such as a murder, was committed, armies of specially trained investigators swarmed the case like ants at a picnic. Wrong.

  “Murders generally fall under the jurisdiction of the local police force. That would be me and my guys. The FBI’s involved only as far as we’ve sent some evidence off to their crime lab.”

  “What kind of evidence?”

  “We found a couple of hairs on the victim that weren’t hers. There was some stuff under her fingernails. I’m hoping it’s human tissue—that she clawed him—so that we can get some DNA, but it might just be dirt. Footprints, things like that.”

  “Were there footprints?”

  Joe grimaced. Actually, by the time they’d gotten to the point of trying to preserve evidence, there’d been dozens of damned footprints. In the rush to get cops and paramedics and ambulance workers on the scene, to say nothing of the continually growing number of onlookers who had converged on the spot as soon as word had started spreading about what was going on, everybody and their mother seemed to have trampled that particular patch of earth. But there had been one footprint partly under the pines—and from the looks of it, he would have guessed that it had been made by a man’s tennis shoe or walking shoe. The others he’d had photographed; that one had been photographed and had a plaster cast made of it. The plaster cast had been sent off to the FBI crime lab along with everything else.

  “A few.”

  “Can you tell”—there was a catch in her voice—“was she sexually assaulted?”

  “No.” The autopsy findings had been very clear about that.

  “Neither had Tara Mitchell.”

  “I’m aware.” Joe had, in fact, already spent hours going over that autopsy report and comparing it to Karen Wise’s. There were a number of similarities—multiple stab wounds, shorn hair, the general location of the crime—but also some dissimilarities. For example, Tara Mitchell’s face had been practically destroyed. Karen Wise’s face hadn’t been touched—but then, in the case of Karen Wise, the killer had been interrupted. Maybe he just hadn’t gotten around to the facial-mutilation part yet.