Night Stalker

by Shirlee McCoy

  “If you’re right, then Bethany knows the Night Stalker,” Adam said, his body humming with adrenaline, his mind sharply focused. “Let’s see if Wren can get a list from her. Men she knows who seem to hang in the background a lot. Maybe are always around when she isn’t expecting them. The Night Stalker isn’t going to be the kind of guy who’s overtly trying to get her attention. He’s more the type to play the friendship card, call just to say hi. He may even have a girlfriend or a wife.”

  “Wonder how many names she can come up with,” River said as he opened the door.

  “If it’s the right name, all we need is one,” Adam responded, hurrying inside.

  SEVEN

  Once upon a time, early morning had been Charlotte’s favorite time of day. She’d loved sitting on the back deck watching the sun rise over distant mountains. In the winter, she’d nurse a cup of coffee while snow drifted across the frozen earth. In the spring, she’d listen to the birds greet the day. Each season had been her favorite, every sunrise something to celebrate. Even when she’d been a young teen with an attitude, she’d appreciated the expectant hush of the waking day.

  After Daniel’s birth, she’d taken him outside with her. She’d bundle him in an old quilt if it were cold. When it was hot, he’d be in a diaper and onesie, his chubby cheeks bathed in gold from the rising sun. On the days when Adam wasn’t working, they’d be out there together, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Always sitting shoulder to shoulder in the old swing that her grandfather had hung decades ago.

  As the years passed and Daniel’s differences became obvious, mornings had become even more precious. That was the time of day when he’d seemed less stressed and more relaxed. He’d sit in her lap while it swayed, humming quietly. No head banging. No screaming. No tearing at his hair. He was peaceful in the early morning, and she’d been peaceful with him.

  Now she hated the hours before dawn.

  She hated the emptiness, the silence, the sickening knowledge that she was about to face another sunrise without the two people she loved most. She tried to sleep through those hours, but her body only knew the rhythm it had always lived by. No matter how late she stayed up, no matter how far she ran or how hard she worked out, her eyes still opened before dawn.

  Today was no exception.

  She’d been lying in bed for an hour before she fell asleep, waiting for Adam, River and Honor to return from the logging camp. She’d convinced Savannah to sleep in the guest room, and then she’d retreated to her bedroom. She hadn’t bothered to change. She’d just lain on top of the covers, telling herself she wasn’t going to fall asleep.

  Of course, she had.

  Now she was awake, bathed in sweat, the remnants of a nightmare clawing at the edges of her mind. She couldn’t remember the details. She could only remember the fear.

  She glanced at the clock on the bedside table, frowning when she saw the time—2:00 a.m. wasn’t her favorite time to be awake. Especially if she wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep.

  And she wasn’t.

  That was the way it worked. She slept for a short period of time, and then she was awake. No matter how much she didn’t want to be.

  Resigned to her fate, she sat up, surprised when a blanket pooled around her hips. She hadn’t had it when she’d fallen asleep. Had Wren walked into the room and put the blanket over her? Or maybe, Charlotte had walked to the linen closet herself, grabbed a blanket and returned to the room. She didn’t normally sleepwalk. But then, she didn’t normally nearly get killed twice in a two-week time span.

  She flicked on the lamp and glanced at Clover. He was lying in his bed a few feet away, his tail thumping rhythmically as he watched her. He was used to being woken at all hours of the night, and he stood as she climbed out of bed.

  She folded the blanket carefully, laying it across the footboard. She could hear voices drifting in from under the door. Not just Wren talking on the phone. There were multiple voices. Male and female.

  Adam?

  She thought she could hear him, and she walked to the door, pulling it open and stepping into the hall. Clover padded along beside her as she made her way down the short corridor. He didn’t seem worried about the people who were talking, but then, Clover wasn’t a nervous dog. If people were inside the house, he’d assume they belonged there.

  She could see the living room as she approached the end of the narrow corridor. It seemed filled with people. FBI agents. Local police. State police. All of them were crowded into a space that wasn’t meant for more than five.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, and they all turned in her direction.

  “Just going over some plans.” Adam spoke for the group, his voice drawing her attention.

  She met his eyes, forgot for a moment that they weren’t the only people in the room. He looked like a more mature version of the boy she’d first seen in seventh-grade biology. His dark hair was shorter, his skin a shade darker, his shoulders and arms filled out with muscle, but his eyes still flashed with curiosity and interest when he looked at her.

  “You’re back,” she said, and he smiled the kind of slow easy smile that had always made her toes curl and her pulse jump.

  That hadn’t changed.

  Nothing, she thought, really had.

  Except for the fact that they weren’t together anymore. Their marriage had dissolved, and Adam had walked away with nothing but a suitcase filled with his clothes, half the money in their checking account and the wedding ring she’d bought him a few days before they’d married. The thick gold band had symbolized forever.

  Had he sold it? Stuck it in a drawer somewhere and forgotten about it?

  She knew it didn’t matter. What he’d done with it, where he’d put it, had nothing to do with her or this moment, but she couldn’t help wondering.

  “And you’re still half-asleep,” he responded. “I can tell by the glassy look in your eyes. Want some coffee?”

  “I’d rather be filled in on the plans you’re making,” she said, shifting her attention to a man in a state police uniform, then to the wall, to the window near the front door. The floor. The ceiling. Anywhere but Adam.

  “Wren? Are you okay with that?” he said, and Charlotte’s gaze jumped to him again, her heart giving a quick hard beat of acknowledgment as she looked at his dark gray eyes.

  “Sure. She’s part of it, so she needs to know,” Wren responded. She was in the kitchen again, sitting at the table with Honor, both of them staring at computer monitors.

  “Part of what?” Charlotte stepped farther into the room, eyeing the men and women who were there. Several were wearing Whisper Lake Sheriff’s Department uniforms. She recognized their faces, but she couldn’t put names to any of them. Most of the men and women who’d been working for the town police department when Daniel died were gone now. They’d either moved to bigger cities or switched careers. They were the only police officers she’d ever gotten to know well. They’d been the ones to reassure her when Daniel first wandered away from his sitter, telling her that he’d probably gone to the neighbors or started walking to town, trying to find her and Adam.

  Later, when divers had pulled his body from the lake, they’d been the ones to break the news, to hold her up when she’d nearly collapsed, to bring her juice and call her grandmother and bring Adam to identify the body.

  She shuddered, and she knew Adam noticed; he was watching her intently, his gaze never wavering.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “A goose walked over my grave,” she responded, borrowing one of her grandmother’s old sayings.

  “You sound like Mildred,” he replied, a soft smile easing the hard lines and angles of his face. “I’m sorry I missed the funeral. I was in another state, working a case. I didn’t get your note until a month later. By that time, it was too late. I did send you—”

  “Y
ou don’t have to explain,” she cut him off. She’d gotten the sympathy card. She’d tucked it in a box with all the others and tried to tell herself that she hadn’t expected more from him. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Three years isn’t that long,” he said.

  “You were going to tell me about your plans?” She changed the subject, and Adam let her.

  “We think that the Night Stalker is someone Bethany and Bubbles both know. Someone who lives close. Who would be very familiar to them.”

  “If that’s the case, I probably know him, too.”

  “That’s what we’re hoping. We asked Bethany to make a list of men she has contact with who fit the guy’s criminal profile. She’s already provided that for us. The next step is getting a list from you and from Bubbles.”

  “A list from me would be long. I know lots of men who live in Whisper Lake and the surrounding areas. I work at the community college and I run dog-training classes. That puts me in touch with a lot of people.”

  “You also visit hospitals and elderly care facilities,” Wren reminded her. As if she’d forgotten her own story.

  “That’s true,” she conceded. “But the people I interact with there aren’t in any shape to do what the Night Stalker does.”

  “We’re not just talking about the patients and clients,” Adam said. “We’re talking about family members of the people you interact with. Employees of the facilities. Doctors, nurses, therapists.”

  “Like I said, that would be a very long list.”

  “It still needs to be made.” Honor joined the conversation, her attention still focused on the computer screen. “Besides, you won’t be listing everyone. You’ll be listing men who fit a certain profile.”

  “Maybe someone can explain that profile to me?” Charlotte suggested, not quite able to hide the sarcasm in her voice. She didn’t mind making the list. As a matter of fact, she welcomed the opportunity to help find the suspect, but she hadn’t been kidding when she’d said her list would be long. She interacted with hundreds of people during her workweek, dozens more when she and Clover visited the hospital and elderly care facilities.

  “I’ll go over it with you in the car,” Adam said, walking to the coat closet and opening it.

  “The car?” she repeated.

  “You wanted to visit Bubbles?” He eyed the interior of the closet for a couple of seconds and then pulled out the winter coat she’d inherited from her grandmother. Mildred had loved fashion, and she’d kept a lot of the clothes she’d acquired during her lifetime. Most of it was in trunks in the storage room upstairs, but the 1940s wool coat had had a timeless quality that Charlotte loved. She wore the coat all the time in the winter, but that wasn’t something Adam could have known. Mildred had passed away two years after he’d left.

  The doctors had said she’d died from a heart attack.

  That might be true, but Charlotte believed that Mildred’s heart had broken long before it had failed. First, she’d lost Robert. Then Daniel. Then Adam and Charlotte had split. Mildred had been living in a cute retirement village in Arizona for several years by then, pursuing a dream she and Robert had once made together. She’d come back for Daniel’s funeral. She’d returned for a few days when Adam left. Both times, she’d told Charlotte how much she enjoyed life in Phoenix, but she’d looked older, sadder, frailer.

  Charlotte had noticed.

  She’d tried to get Mildred to move back to the cottage, but her grandmother had refused to return. She’d died in a hospital in Phoenix an hour before Charlotte could get to her.

  “Charlotte?” Adam prodded. “Have you changed your mind about visiting Bubbles?”

  “It’s a little early in the morning,” she said, her mouth dry with memories and sorrow.

  “I don’t think Bubbles will mind,” he responded, holding out the coat so that she could slide into it. His fingers were warm against her nape as he straightened the collar, and she felt something dormant spring to life again. It zipped through her, lodging itself in that space in her heart. The one that had only and always been reserved for Adam.

  She shivered, stepping back.

  “Bubbles might not mind,” she commented. “But I’m not sure the hospital will want us there. Visiting hours ended a long time ago.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Wren said. “Everything is cleared. Besides, Bubbles has been awake and asking for you for a while.”

  “She has been?”

  “Have you checked your phone? I’m sure you’ve gotten more messages than any of us, but she’s managed to call me and Adam several times.”

  Surprised, Charlotte patted her pockets, trying to find her cell phone. When she didn’t, she glanced around the room, looking for her purse.

  “Right here.” Adam reached into the closet again and pulled out her handbag. “You left it on the couch. I didn’t want it getting lost in the shuffle of people moving through the house.”

  “Thanks,” she mumbled, digging through it until she found her cell phone. Sure enough, there were several voice mail messages. She listened as she grabbed keys from the hook near the front door and dropped them into her purse.

  The first and second messages were from Bubbles, her voice shaky and hoarse. She mentioned a beady-eyed man who wouldn’t leave her alone and asked Charlotte to pick up toiletries from her house.

  “Was that her?” Adam asked.

  “Yes. She wants me to get a few things from her place.”

  “We’ll stop there on the way out.”

  She nodded, still listening as the third voice mail message began.

  “Hi, Charlotte,” a woman said. “This is Anna Randel from Pine Valley Center. We have you and Clover on the schedule for next week, but I was wondering if you could come sometime this week, as well. The residents love your visits, and one of them has been asking for you. Give me a call. Maybe we can work something out?”

  “Was that Bubbles, too? She sure hasn’t lost her persistence and determination, has she?” Adam said, grabbing his coat from the back of a chair. She’d forgotten that he did that. Forgotten how much it had amused her that a man as neat and organized as he was constantly left his coat dangling from whatever available surface he could find.

  “She hasn’t, but that wasn’t her. It was someone from an Alzheimer’s center Clover and I visit. She wanted to know if we could come this week.”

  “Probably not,” Adam responded, steering her toward the door. “Until we find the Night Stalker, I prefer you stay out of the public eye.”

  “And yet,” Wren muttered, shrugging into her coat, “we’re bringing her to the hospital to visit Bubbles.”

  “We’ve had the hospital under surveillance for hours,” Adam responded. “Sam. Local and state police. Plenty of law enforcement presence, and the Night Stalker isn’t going to risk being caught. He’ll stay away and wait for an opportunity to strike without risk.”

  “Let’s make sure not to give him one. River, how about you head over to Bubbles’s house? Check things out? We’ll ride over in the car. Bubbles has a portico that will offer us some cover, but let’s make this quick. I want to spend as little time outside as possible.” Wren glanced at her watch. “We’ll have ten minutes to gather the items Bubbles wants. Then we’re out of there.”

  “I need to let Clover out before we go,” Charlotte cut in, glancing at the dog. He’d made himself comfortable on the couch, squeezed between two state police officers. They were petting him, of course. No one could resist Clover’s soft coat and sweet face.

  “How about we let someone else do that?” Adam suggested. “I don’t know about you, but I’m anxious to hear what Bubbles has to say about what happened.”

  “I’ll let him out,” one of the Whisper Lake police officers said. He looked very young and very familiar, his bright blue eyes surrounded by thick black lashes that any woman w
ould be proud of.

  Charlotte studied him for a moment, trying to place the face. “Were you one of my students?” she guessed.

  He nodded. “I’m Josh Henry. I was in your Calc 100 class last year. I attended a couple of your review sessions, too. Thanks to those, I passed the class and got my Associate of Arts degree.”

  “I think that probably had more to do with you than with my review classes,” she said. She remembered him now—always in the front row. Eager and quick. Math hadn’t been his strength, but he’d studied hard and pursued extra help when he needed it. Now he’d graduated, joined the police force and was making her feel way older than she probably should.

  Life was passing, and she was letting it happen.

  When had she stopped being an active participant?

  When had her carefully crafted routine become her definition of living?

  She frowned, watching as Josh grabbed the leash that was hanging near the back door, hooked it to Clover’s collar and stepped outside with him.

  “Was I ever that young and energetic?” she whispered, and Adam smiled.

  “You still are that young, Charlotte.”

  “He’s a teenager,” she protested.

  “He’s twenty-five. Three years younger than you.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “We check backgrounds on everyone who’s working with us,” he responded.

  “Are we ready?” River cut in.

  “Whenever you are,” Adam replied.

  “Now works. I’ll meet you guys over there.” He stepped outside and shut the door.

  “What about the key?” Charlotte asked, pulling her key chain from her purse.

  “He won’t need it,” Adam assured her, cupping her elbow and walking her to the door. She couldn’t feel the warmth of his skin through her coat sleeve, but she could feel the gentle strength of his grip, the subtle way he was offering support.

  She wanted to cling to him the way she used to.

  She wanted to step in close and feel his biceps brushing against her shoulder as they moved. She wanted so many things she could never have—a do-over, a second chance, three seconds to go back to the day she’d let him walk away and beg him to stay. She’d been too proud back then, too broken, too angry.