Find Me

by Debra Webb

  Four-poster bed with a lace canopy. Lots of big fluffy pillows and lush bedding. Antique furnishings. Cable television. High-speed Internet service. Her own private bath and a nice big bowl of fruit.

  She sat on the mattress and bounced.

  "Not too bad."

  'Course, a good mattress didn't guarantee she would sleep.

  She pushed up and wandered over to the massive window. Kale Conner strode down the front steps and across the parking area to his Jeep. Long, confident strides. She felt a prick of disappointment that he didn't spare a glance back at the inn as he got into the vehicle.

  There it was. The most fundamental reason she should avoid him at all costs.

  Attraction.

  He really did have nice eyes. She didn't usually pay attention to eyes other than for assessing intent and emotion. As good-looking as Kale Conner was his best assets were definitely his eyes. Looking at him from a purely physical perspective, she had to confess that he fell into the hot category. He had a good voice, too. Low and deep, and he was obviously intelligent.

  As his Jeep moved down the twisted road leading back to town she wondered if he really believed that sales pitch he'd given her about the citizens of Youngstown. Was he really that naive?

  Then again, his life didn't revolve around murder.

  Whatever he thought, the fact was that a murderer could crop up anywhere. Their reason for becoming a killer could be environmental, could be genetic.

  Yet this whole village appeared to be convinced that their troubles were not related to a local. At least not one from this century. Give them a curse or a stranger, but not one of their own.

  When Conner's taillights disappeared, she shifted her attention to the village and harbor. It was dark now but the collage of lights around the waterfront twinkled in the clear night. The sailboats drifted like ghosts with their white covers shimmering in the moonlight. Squares of light glowed from the homes that clung to the hillside flanking the inlet. She could only assume that the lack of sun in the winter prompted the owners to forgo curtains or blinds on their windows. She couldn't imagine, even on the fourth floor, leaving her windows naked for anyone's viewing pleasure.

  Though it had melted on the pavement and had been scraped from the parking lots and driveways, snowbanks loitered beneath trees and against the corners of buildings and rooftops. The winding street up to the inn's hilltop station had reiterated Conner's point about four-wheel drive. The first icy or snowy morning she would regret not having gone with a fully equipped SUV.

  Kale Conner. She unzipped and shed her coat. Her research indicated he was thirty, the eldest of three children. After his father became disabled ten years ago, the full responsibility of the family's fishing business had fallen upon his shoulders. He'd left his university studies behind and returned home. She wondered if he regretted that choice.

  His younger brother was twenty-three and in his final year at the University of Massachusetts. His sister was eighteen and a senior at Youngstown High School. The matriarch of the family attended to the disabled father and took care of things at home, leaving the business to her eldest son.

  The four other village council members were much older than Conner, married with grown children and, of course, pillars of the community. Sarah hadn't been able to find any dirt on the four. Typical small-town politicians with their fingers in every pie.

  Chief of Police Benjamin Willard, sixty, was, from all reports, born with steel blue in his veins. A wife and two grown children. Mayor Fritz Patterson was the former principal of Youngstown High School and a widower. No dirt on the chief or the mayor, either.

  Squeaky clean.

  The whole village population appeared to be just what Conner said, good, God-fearing, compassionate folks.

  But that was impossible.

  Good, God-fearing, compassionate folks didn't mutilate and murder young women.

  Nope.

  Someone here had a secret. A dirty, disgusting secret, and she was going to find it.

  Sarah dragged off the ski cap. She threaded her fingers through her hair and braced her elbows on the window. Randall Enfinger, the bicoastal developer who'd purchased the Young estate, was clean. As clean as a guy that rich and with that many connections could be. He'd bought the extensive property for the purpose of building a resort. He didn't care that the village's founding father, Thomas Young, had been born there. The greedy heirs didn't appear to care, either, since they had sold to the highest bidder with no thought as to what happened after the sale.

  As soon as the deconstruction had started, so had the village's trouble. At first there were protests from the residents. Local media aired the controversy. Then Mother Nature stepped in. Hurricane-force winds had struck in the middle of the night. No lives had been lost but the property damage had been significant. Sarah had seen the trees along Calderwood Lane and Chapel Trail that had been snapped by the out-of-season storm. As an encore, full-on winter arrived early in the form of heavy snows in December and January. All construction work had stopped for a couple of weeks.

  When even the forces of nature didn't stop Enfinger completely, Valerie Gerard went missing. A few days later her body had been found and a faction of the village residents had jumped on the curse bandwagon. Enfinger's temporary office at the development site had burned.

  "Just like twenty years ago" the headlines had read. The accidental unearthing of a historic, and previously undiscovered, family cemetery had set off the chain of events back then. A hurricane had struck, doing substantial damage and killing four Youngstown residents. Almost immediately afterward, two women, one eighteen and one nineteen, had been murdered in a very similar manner as Valerie Gerard; their bodies discovered at the chapel. As if that wasn't punishment enough, according to those who clung to the curse theory, the winter that followed was the worst in Youngstown history.

  Until now.

  Though Conner and Brighton hadn't mentioned it, the tale went that the devil himself had been commissioned with punishing the villagers for any infractions of this nature.

  "Bullshit." Sarah pushed away from the window and scoped out the minibar. Wine. Bottled water. She frowned. No liquor?

  Frustrated and tired, she opened a personal serving bottle of white wine that had been grown, bottled, and aged right here in a Youngstown vineyard.

  "Probably poisoned."

  She took a long, deep swallow anyway.

  Not bad. She drifted back to the bed, plunked the bottle on the antique side table, and opened her suitcase. She shoved her stuff into a couple of drawers and tucked the bag under the bed. Cosmetic bag in hand, she shuffled to the bathroom and tossed it onto the counter. "Cosmetic bag" was a misnomer in her case. She didn't wear unnecessary cosmetics. Deodorant, Chapstick, toothbrush and paste, and hairbrush were all she packed.

  Finishing her wine, she kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the bed. It was early still but she was tired. She needed to think, to review the research she'd done before she crashed for the night.

  Tomorrow she would get started with the interviews. That was when she would really make friends. She would be watching for that compassion Conner spoke of.

  The buzz of her cell phone vibrating reminded her that she hadn't called her editor. Tae Green would be pissed. She rolled off the bed and dug for her phone in her coat pocket.

  "Newton," she answered without checking the number first as she usually did.

  "Sarah, you missed your appointment today."

  Big mistake.

  "Sorry about that, Doc. I had an unexpected assignment. I completely forgot the appointment." Shit. Dr. Ballantine. Her shrink. She would never get off the phone without answering endless, probing questions.

  "You know our deal, Sarah. You can miss one appointment but if you miss two, we have the session by phone. Is now good for you?"

  Sarah fell back onto the bed. Damn it. Damn her editor. This was his fault. She'd had that little meltdown a couple of years ago and he'd black
mailed her into therapy. One session per week or no field assignments. Even worse, he kept Ballantine abreast of Sarah's assignments—just to ensure she wasn't working too hard or going against the doc's orders.

  Damn it.

  "Sure." She made a face. "Now's fine."

  "Excellent."

  The sound of a page turning told Sarah the doc was preparing to take notes. At least she wasn't recording it. Sarah hated recorded sessions. What if someone broke into the doc's office and stole the tapes or the notes? The dirt-bag killer here in Youngstown wasn't the only one with secrets.

  Sarah would just as soon hers stayed where they belonged. In the past.

  "How have you been sleeping?"

  "Great." Lie one.

  "Good. Any dreams or nightmares that wake you or unsettle you?"

  "Nope." Lie two. She usually made it all the way to four before Dr. Ballantine called her on her lack of cooperation.

  "Any night sweats or headaches?"

  "Nada." Three. Sarah reached up and righted the painting of the harbor hanging over her bed.

  "Have you been taking your medication?"

  "Absolutely." Four.

  "When did you last eat?"

  Hey, this was going pretty damned good. Maybe she should do this over the phone more often. "About two hours ago. This hot guy took me to a cozy restaurant right on the water. It was nice." Five. Six.

  Damn, she was on a roll.

  "I'm impressed, Sarah."

  She was, too. "I try, Doc."

  "Now." Paper rustled as Dr. Ballantine flipped to a new page in her notepad. "Let's start from the beginning once more. This time I'd like the truth."

  Sarah rolled her eyes. Fooling Ballantine had been wishful thinking. "Shitty. Yes. Yes. No. And I can't remember."

  "I see."

  Honesty was never the best policy when it came to shrinks.

  At least not for Sarah.

  "So, you're not sleeping. You're experiencing those same nightmares. You're having night sweats and headaches. Not taking your medicine. And you haven't eaten today."

  "I had coffee and wine. Does that count?"

  "Sarah."

  She sat up and opened the drawer on the bedside table. A room service menu mocked her. "You know I hate to eat at these places. They could poison me."

  "Paranoid already? You haven't even been there twenty-four hours. Doesn't it usually take forty-eight?"

  There was nothing worse than a shrink who knew every about you. "Okay. I'll eat. Then I'll take my medicine and go to sleep. I won't dream or sweat or any of that other shit. Okay?"

  "I wish I could trust you to do exactly that." Dead air pulsed between them. "Sarah, if you stay on this track you're headed for trouble. Following my advice is the only way to avoid it. You know this."

  Sarah pulled out the menu and scanned the items available after seven. What else would one eat in Maine? Chowder.

  "I'm ordering something right now. You can listen." Sarah ignored whatever the doc said and placed her cell on the table while she made the call on the room phone. She ordered the chowder and hot tea. A young, female voice promised to deliver the order within fifteen minutes. Sarah recradled the receiver and picked up her cell. "You happy now?"

  "Sarah."

  Here it came. The talk.

  "Have you forgotten what happened last time?"

  Sarah scrubbed her free hand over her face. "Of course not." How could she? She'd spent seven days in a padded room with voices that weren't hers screaming in her head. Then another seven days under close observation.

  "This is the way it starts," Ballantine scolded gently. "You stop eating and taking your medicine. You stop sleeping and then you become vulnerable to the break."

  The break. That was the official diagnosis. A break in reality. The inability to control one's thoughts or actions and to discern the real from the imagined.

  Not exactly a trip to the islands.

  "I'll check in with you tomorrow," Sarah promised. "I'll be fed and fully medicated. I swear."

  "I've seen the news reports regarding the case you're working on, Sarah. You let yourself be vulnerable and you could end up a victim. You know this. It's one of the hazards of your work. Not to mention the fact that you're not going to win any popularity contests while you're there. Stress can be an overpowering enemy."

  "Yeah. Yeah. I got it, Doc. I'll do better."

  "Tomorrow," Ballantine reminded. "Five o'clock. You call me and give me an update."

  Sarah gave her assurance and ended the call. She pitched her cell aside and lay there for a long, disturbing moment considering all that Ballantine had said.

  The medicine made Sarah groggy, slowed her reactions. She just forgot to eat. It wasn't on purpose. And the dreams et al, she had about as much control over those as she did the rest of her life. Shit happened.

  She'd always dealt with it just fine except that once.

  Maybe the case had been too close to home. The murdered kids had been between eight and ten years of age. Sarah had empathized too closely with their vulnerability. Gotten in too deep… nearly gotten herself killed.

  She touched her right side. Shuddered.

  Put it away. Don't even look.

  In her experience the best medicine for her was work.

  As long as she remembered not to trust anyone but herself.

  With that in mind, she sat up and reached for her shoulder bag. She never left home without it. Inside she carried a folder on whatever case she was working, a flashlight, compact pair of binoculars, an ultrathin digital camera, pepper spray, matches, and toilet paper. Oh, and a bottle of water. The bag was her life preserver.

  She pulled the folder from the bag and thumbed through her handwritten notes and the newspaper clippings and police reports she'd gathered. As if she'd gone blind and couldn't see any of those things, her thoughts wandered back to Conner. If she opted to keep him around, how long would it take her to win him over to her side? A couple of days? Maybe. Right now he was just doing the job he'd been ordered to do. But he wanted the truth just as badly as she did. Maybe more. He wouldn't find it until he backed off that high horse of his and admitted that the killer could be anyone.

  That could be expecting too much. Maybe winning him over wasn't possible.

  She'd learned in the past couple of hours that he wasn't quite as easygoing as he appeared.

  Not twenty minutes ago she had reminded herself what trouble she could get into hanging around with a guy like him. Suddenly she was leaning in that direction.

  Kale Conner was a means to an end. He could help her get into places she might not get into otherwise. He could be useful. Keeping him around another day or so couldn't hurt.

  The last piece of research material she had in her file was a photograph that had cost her editor a pretty penny. A copy of a crime-scene photo taken of Valerie Gerard's body on the cold stone floor at the chapel.

  Why hadn't Conner told her the truth about the body?

  Maybe he'd been instructed not to. After all, that detail hadn't been disclosed to the public. Nine days and counting and there hadn't been a leak yet. But that wouldn't last. Eventually someone would get smart enough to bribe the same tech she had and then the proverbial shit would hit the fan.

  That one detail was more telling than any other related to the condition of the body. It also told something significant about the killer.

  A single word had been written along the victim's torso in her own blood.

  That one word shifted this homicide to a whole different level.

  A very personal level.

  Sarah stared at the photo of the young woman who had died such a slow, painful death.

  "Who hated you enough to call you that?" Sarah murmured. "Then killed you for it?"

  One word, four seemingly innocuous letters that when aligned together carried profound meaning.

  LIAR.

  CHAPTER 9

  1812 Captain's Alley, 8:30 P.M.

  Kal
e spread the invoices across the kitchen table. Christine, his secretary, had done an outstanding job organizing the paperwork he needed to sign. He penned his legal signature on one document after the other, then leaned back in the chair and considered that was about all he needed to do for now.

  Truth was, the business could basically run itself without him. The tension that admission generated flexed in his clenched jaw.

  What did that say about his life?

  Maybe not a whole hell of a lot. He'd called his father and reviewed this month's ledger. All was satisfactory considering it was the end of February and still damned cold. Business would kick into high gear as spring neared.

  His crew didn't need him holding their hands or overseeing their work. Kale's absence around the office during Sarah Newton's stay in Youngstown would scarcely be missed though he would never admit as much.

  He should be glad. He should be damned thrilled that he had reliable employees and loyal customers.

  But those things didn't fill the emptiness expanding inside him with ever-increasing steadiness lately.

  Pushing back his chair, he stood and paced his kitchen. His golden retriever, Angie, swished her tail across the floor, her big eyes following her master's movements. He could take her for a walk or load the dishwasher. Taking care of a load of laundry or two wouldn't hurt. He never had to worry about cooking. His mom always made enough for him when she prepared the family meals. If he failed to stop by and pick up dinner, his sister delivered it each evening before dark. He would come home and find a home-cooked meal waiting for him.

  Kale stopped, hands on hips, and surveyed the home he'd bought seven years ago. Seriously spacious for a bachelor. Ocean view across the street. Two-car garage, small, easily maintained yard. He had every reason to be proud of his accomplishments.

  Why wasn't he?

  He threaded his fingers through his hair and heaved out a disgusted breath.

  It was her.

  She'd stormed into town and shaken up his carefully constructed, strictly maintained routine.