Go Mother, Nicky urged silently. Her mother pulled the blazer through her hands like a scarf.
“I feel . . . something in the pocket,” Leonora said grimly as her eyes popped open.
It was all Nicky could do not to groan. Behind her, she heard a collective whoosh of exhalations.
Let the letdown begin.
“No, it’s trapped in the lining.” Leonora stuck her hand down inside the blazer’s pocket and fished around. A moment later, she came up with the kind of small cassette tape that might fit in a mini tape recorder. She stared at it blankly for a moment.
“I felt her . . . I felt her . . . and then I felt this.” Leonora clenched her fist around it. “It threw me off.”
Nicky could tell from her mother’s expression that if there hadn’t been strangers and cameras present, she would have given vent to a few choice swear words.
“Here, give it to me.” Nicky stepped forward hurriedly and removed the distracting object from her mother’s hand. Leonora glared at the tape and then, as Nicky retreated, sticking the offending object in her own blazer pocket, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes again. She ran her hands over the blazer. . . .
“She was surprised. Taken by surprise. He came out of the dark and took her by surprise.” Leonora grabbed the left side of her head near her temple. “I feel a pain in the side of my head. He hit her in the head. Then . . . then . . .”
Suddenly, she froze. Her eyes flew open, and she stared fixedly in front of her.
The room suddenly felt cold.
Knowing the signs, Nicky froze, too—except for one frantic sideways glance to make sure that the cameras were running. They were.
“It’s all right, we’re here to help you.” Leonora seemed to be speaking to someone none of the rest of them could see.
“It’s Karen,” she said in an aside to Nicky. Her voice was tense with suppressed excitement. Nicky felt her heart lurch. She, too, stared at the spot where Leonora seemed to be looking, but saw nothing. The thought that her mother was seeing Karen made her breathing quicken. Only three weeks ago, Karen would have been in this room with them, alive. “She’s here. I can see her.” Then, switching her attention back to the invisible visitor, Leonora nodded sympathetically, then said, “Yes, I know. You have every right to be angry.” She fell silent, cocking her head a little to one side, seeming to listen. “Can you tell us who killed you?” She cocked her head again. “Listen, she says. Listen. He’s evil? She saying he’s evil. Who’s evil, Karen? Who? All she’s saying now is ‘He’s evil,’ over and over again. Wait. Karen, wait. Oh, she’s fading. Karen, come back. . . . Please come back. . . . She’s gone.”
Leonora seemed to slump a little. Nicky let out her breath. Behind her, she heard another collective whoosh that meant everybody else was doing the same.
Nicky stepped forward, microphone in hand, on for the audience at home.
“Can you tell us what just happened, Leonora?”
Leonora looked at her. Her eyes were still a little cloudy, as they usually were when she was coming off an encounter of the otherworldly kind. It took a minute for them to sharpen, focus.
“Karen was here,” she said. “She’s very angry about being dead. She said she wants her life back, she was only twenty-three and she wasn’t ready to die. She said we should listen, that the man who killed her is evil. She kept repeating it: evil, evil, evil. And then she just faded away.” Leonora paused, then added excusingly, “She hasn’t been dead long. It takes a while for them to learn to really focus their energy. She’s actually doing very well for such a new spirit.”
After that, it was over. Everyone sensed it: All the energy had left the room. After a few more fruitless tries at making contact, they gave up and retreated to the kitchen for restorative coffee—all except for Isabelle, that is, who went outside on the porch to answer a call on her cell phone.
“I hope you’re not expecting much out of me tonight,” Leonora muttered to Nicky in an aside that only the two of them could hear.
“Whatever you get will be fine. No matter what happens, I’ve got enough material to carry an hour,” Nicky said. “Anyway, that thing just now with Karen was great. You actually saw her. You’re getting over the block, Mama.”
“I did see her, didn’t I?” Leonora seemed to perk up a little. “Maybe I am getting better. I certainly hope so.”
“Excuse me, Nicky, but Mr. Levin wants to talk to you.” Isabelle stuck her head in the back door and frantically beckoned Nicky. Nicky was standing at the counter beside Leonora, who had just finished refilling her cup. Everyone else was sitting around the table. Nicky went out the door to take the call. Even as she said hello, she realized that just three weeks ago, a call from Twenty-four Hours Investigates’s Head Honcho would have set her heart to knocking and filled her stomach with butterflies. Today, the fact that he was calling her didn’t even really matter. Too much water—too many lives, too many deaths, too many confrontations with the things that were truly important in life—had passed under the bridge to make a mere TV show seem quite as important as it had before.
“I just wanted to tell you that there’s a write-up in Entertainment Weekly about the show in the issue hitting the stands next week. The story calls Twenty-four Hours Investigates the best surprise of the season. It says your segments about the Lazarus Killer are must-see TV and”—there was a pause, as if he meant to let tension build (which, let’s be honest, it was)—“it says you are one of the best new television personalities of the year.”
Okay, strike her earlier thought about a mere TV show being unimportant. As far as the whole scheme-of-life thing was concerned, it probably wasn’t. But for her, personally, it was a biggie. Nicky felt a flood of warmth hit her veins that was as potent as any chemically induced high. She might not have been grinning like an idiot on the outside—she had some dignity, after all—but she was definitely grinning like an idiot on the inside.
“That’s good news,” she said, trying to project total cool, as though she got news like that all the time. “Thank you for calling to tell me.”
“Yeah, well, I’m looking forward to watching the wrap-up tonight. You got four hours until you’re on live. You gonna stay there at your mother’s house until then?”
“No, I’ve been staying somewhere else. I’ll probably go back there and go over some of the things I’m hoping to use on tonight’s show.”
He chuckled. “There you go, that’s why you’re having this kind of success: You’re a dedicated reporter. I made the right choice sending you back there. I just want you to know, everybody here is proud of you.”
Nicky was still floating—although not, she hoped, in any outwardly visible way—when she left Twybee Cottage fifteen minutes later. Not even the rain was enough to dampen her spirits. It came down in sheets, pelting the ground so hard that it bounced off, making it hard to see where she was going. Luckily, she could have driven this route blindfolded by now. Behind her, Andy Cohen’s headlights in her rearview mirror told her that he was right on her tail.
After parking out in front of Joe’s house, Nicky exited the car umbrella-first and sprinted for the front door. By the time she got inside, everything except her head and the upper third of her body was wet, and her shoes made small, muddy puddles on Joe’s floor.
If she’d been choosing, this kind of weather was not what she would have picked for her last show. The house was as dark as if it were night outside.
“One of the best new television personalities of the year” (and never mind that she’d been on the air since college). It felt good—really, really good.
“This keeps up, we’re going to have some major flooding,” Cohen grunted as he rushed into the house behind her. Since he was wearing a police-issue poncho, he was a lot dryer than she was as soon as he took it off. Joe’s floor, however, suffered a major assault. Nicky went to get a towel and wiped the mess up while Cohen did a quick walk-through of the house.
“So, wha
t’s the plan?” he asked, plopping down on the couch and reaching for the remote.
“I need to be over at the Old Taylor Place by eight.” That’s when they had all agreed to reconvene; that hour before they went on the air should give everybody plenty of time to do what needed to be done. “Until then, I’m going to take a shower and do some work. You”—she grinned at him—“get to watch TV.”
“Hell of a job,” he said, and settled in comfortably.
Nicky took a shower and put on jeans and a T-shirt. Then she headed for the kitchen. Before she did anything else, she needed a snack.
Engaged as she was in mentally reviewing the contents of Joe’s refrigerator, she was half a dozen steps into the dark-except-for-the-TV living room before she noticed anything.
Cohen was lying at an almost unnatural angle against a corner of the couch, which seemed to be turning black around him. His left hand, the only one that she could see, was flapping against a cushion like a small wounded bird. His eyes were closed, his mouth open.
There was a huge black gap, like a grotesque second smile, across his throat. Liquid, shiny like oil, poured from it.
A hot, meaty, slaughterhouse kind of smell hung in the air.
It was the smell that connected the dots for her.
Cohen had just had his throat slit.
23
SOMETHING SLAMMED HARD into the side of Nicky’s head. Crying out, she saw stars and stumbled sideways against the orange rocker, barely managing to catch herself before she crashed to the floor. Instinctively, she glanced around.
What? Who?
Her ears were ringing. Her heart gave a great leap like a thoroughbred late out of the starting gate, trying to catch up with the field. Bright splotches of color whirled in front of her eyes. Even as her stunned brain tried to make sense of what was happening, she knew it was bad, knew that her life was in danger, knew that whomever this was who was rushing toward her through the gloomy living room had just murdered Cohen. A scream ripped out of her throat, followed by another and another. Pushing away from the chair, she tried to run, tried to escape, while her heart pounded and adrenaline shot through her veins and her knees threatened to give way. Instead of running, she was staggering, staggering forward, and everything was revolving around her and she couldn’t focus and anyway, it was too late: The attacker was right there. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a blurry glimpse of something arcing through the gloom toward her head just in time for her to throw up an arm and duck.
Whatever it was glanced off the back of her head with a sound like a melon hitting the pavement. The blow sent a tinny taste flying into her mouth: blood. Nicky fell to her knees, mewling rather than screaming now, and then the attacker was upon her, straddling her back, an arm shooting around her neck in a chokehold.
She couldn’t breathe.
“Please, no—” The words were cut off as the arm instantly tightened.
Gasping for air, so dizzy that the room whirled like a merry-go-round in front of her eyes, she fought for the ability to breathe, clawing at the arm that was crushing her windpipe.
Long sleeves, he’s wearing long sleeves . . . and gloves . . .
A cold, sharp prick below her ear sent terror coursing like ice water through her veins.
God, help me. He’s going to cut my throat. . . .
“Quit fighting.” It was a man’s voice, accompanied by another savage tightening of the arm around her neck. Nicky choked, gagging, clawing at the arm. “I said quit fighting.”
The blade felt icy cold against her skin. He was pressing harder. . . .
That warm little trickle down the side of her throat was blood—her blood.
She froze. Her stomach cramped and tied itself into a knot. Her chest heaved as she fought to breathe.
I don’t want to die. . . .
“I want the tape. Where’s the tape?”
Familiar. Voice.
But her ears were ringing and everything was swirling, and the lack of oxygen combined with fear had turned her bones to jelly and she couldn’t quite tell, didn’t quite know who.
His grip on her throat eased. She gasped, coughed, and sucked in air.
“I want the tape.”
“The . . . the tape?” The choked-out question earned her a punch to the temple that made her see stars again. Tears were leaking from her eyes, running down her cheeks. They were warm against her icy skin. She couldn’t think, couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. Cold sweat washed over her in waves.
“The tape. I want the tape. The one from Karen Wise’s coat. Where is it?”
The tape from Karen’s blazer. All of a sudden Nicky remembered Leonora repeating what she had heard Karen say: “Listen. He’s evil.” Karen had appeared to Leonora right after the tape had been found. Had she meant listen to the tape?
“Where’s the damned tape?”
He hit her again, viciously, with the hand clutching the knife so that the handle smashed into her temple. Her teeth slammed together. Pain made her cry out.
“In . . . in the kitchen,” she gasped.
It was a lie, a desperate lie, the best her poor fogged brain could come up with. The kitchen seemed a better bet as a place to stage a fight for her life in than the bedroom. To begin with, it had an outside door. . . .
“Show me where.”
Keeping his arm tight around her neck and the knife at her throat, he hauled her to her feet.
“Where?” He roared in her ear.
Her heart slammed painfully in her chest. Her hand, as she lifted it to point toward the kitchen, was shaking, she saw. She was shivering, trembling from head to toe, so frightened that she was nauseated with it. As he pushed her in the direction she had indicated, she saw, from the corner of her eye, that Cohen’s fluttering hand had stilled.
He was dead. She mourned him, mourned Karen and Marsha Browning, mourned her own fate.
I don’t want to die. . . .
He was strong, stocky, at least several inches taller than she. She could smell him—a sickening combination of sweat and blood and man—and feel the warm bulk of him all around her, but so far, she hadn’t seen his face.
But his voice was familiar. . . .
From somewhere, faint but unmistakable, she heard a phone ring. Her cell phone. It was in the bedroom with her discarded clothes—and the tape. He stopped pushing her for an instant, seeming to hesitate, as if the phone worried him.
Please, God. Someone would grow alarmed when she didn’t answer and come looking for her. Please, God, don’t make it too late.
“I’ll get the tape for you,” she whimpered. “Just don’t hurt me.”
That seemed to do the trick. Cursing in a vicious, guttural undertone that told her he was starting to feel pressure, that the ringing phone had spooked him, that time—her time—might be running out, he shoved her through the archway into the kitchen.
“Get it now.”
A plan, a plan, she needed a plan, she thought desperately. The kitchen was gloomy, dark. No friendly ghosts in sight. No boiling pots of coffee. Only a small, black pig looking through the partly open mini-blinds that covered the back door. A plan. Her phone had stopped ringing. Would anyone come looking for her? There was no time. . . .
Nicky pointed. “In there.”
“Get it.”
He never slackened his grip, and the tip of the knife never left the hollow beneath her ear as she edged across the kitchen with him as close against her as a backpack, matching her step for step. Her mouth was so dry that she couldn’t even swallow. Her heart thundered. Her pulse raced. Her breathing came fast and erratic. She was light-headed with fear, woozy with it.
What she planned to do was probably going to get her killed—but if she didn’t do it, he was certainly going to kill her anyway. If she had any hope at all of surviving, this was her only chance.
“Now.” His tone was savage.
Okay, she told herself. Take a deep breath. Here she was, wedged against the cabinets with
him so close against her that she could feel the buttons on his shirt hard against her back, one of his meaty arms around her throat, and a knife just below her ear, getting ready to pull open the drawer where she had indicated the tape was stashed. She was going to have to be fast, she was going to have to be vicious. . . .
In the shiny silver knob of the upper cabinet closest to her, she saw a reflection of his face. The kitchen was full of shadows, and the knob distorted his features, but there was no mistaking who it was.
“Sid,” she gasped.
He went still. Then he, too, saw the knob. She knew, because their eyes met in it.
“Hello, sweetie pie.” His tone was as repellent as the slimy, wet underside of a slug.
“Ohmigod, why?” It was the merest breath of sound.
She could feel the sudden jerk of his chest against her back as he gave a grunt of laughter.
“You can take all the credit. You gave me the idea. You and your psycho mother. ‘Let’s scare up the dead victims of a serial killer,’ ” he mimicked in a savage falsetto. “Helped me out a lot, actually. I was already working on a way to get rid of that bitch Karen Wise. You handed it to me on a platter. I made it look good, didn’t I? Even to cutting off some of her hair. To make it stick, though, I had to follow through on the whole serial-killer bit. How’d you like those e-mails? Made for good TV, didn’t they? You should thank me: I gave your career a hell of a boost.”
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