“Cancer. Ask your friend Lucinda. She figured it out. I’d ask her how much time I’ve got left, but I have a pretty good idea. So I wanted to let you know that I’m sorry about what happened. I should have listened to you, but I let my pride get in the way.”
He stops talking, starts coughing again.
Listening to it, Neal can feel Frank’s helplessness. Hopelessness.
“Listen, Frank, you don’t have to—”
“Hear me out. I went down the wrong path because your friend Lucinda figured out that I was dying before I was ready to admit it, even to myself. I was angry at the world, and I took it out on her.”
“That’s not the only reason. There was evidence—”
“No, but you were right. I should have looked harder at Chicago. I wouldn’t listen to you. If I had, that second girl wouldn’t be dead.”
“You don’t know that’s the case, Frank.”
“I don’t know that it’s not. I have to live with that. Not for much longer, but still…So, I’m asking your forgiveness.”
“Frank—”
“Hear me out, I said.” That Frank is as cantankerous as ever makes Neal smile and tear up at the same time. “I can only swallow so much pride in a day. Do you forgive me, Neal?”
“I forgive you.”
“Thank you.”
“What can I do for you? Is there anything you need?”
“Yes. But other than forgiveness, it’s nothing you can give me. Thank you, though.”
“You’re welcome. And Frank? I’m sorry.”
“That was my line.” Frank goes into another coughing spell. When it’s over, he says, “You know, there is one thing you can do for me, after all.”
“What is it?”
“Make sure somebody catches the son of a bitch who killed Randy’s wife.”
After Scarlet kissed his cheek with her red lipstick lips on that long ago day, he knew she was his girlfriend, even though he hardly got to see her because she worked nights and slept days.
His mother worked days and slept nights and didn’t meet Scarlet, didn’t even know she existed across the hall, as far as he could tell.
The boys at school knew, though.
They knew because he told them, one day just before graduation, when they were heckling him in the locker room as always, calling him the usual names: candy ass, Mama’s boy, Hyena.
But this time, he held up his head, and he told them defiantly, “I have a girlfriend, and she’s better looking than all of your girlfriends put together.”
Of course, they didn’t believe him, so he told them all about Scarlet, and how she was an older woman, and how she’d kissed him wearing red lipstick.
They still didn’t believe him, so he told them to come over after school, when his mother was at work, and he’d introduce them.
He remembers how excited he was that hot June afternoon when the boys showed up and he led them across the hall to her door.
He remembers knocking, remembers the door opening, remembers Scarlet standing there, beautiful and statuesque, wearing a silky ruby-colored robe and a turban and, of course, her red lipstick.
“These are my friends,” he told her. “I wanted them to meet you.”
“Oh, how nice, Lover Boy,” she said in her throaty voice, and she shook all their hands.
Then she kissed him—again!—on the cheek. Right in front of the boys.
“I have to go take my bath and get ready for work now,” she said, and sent them on their way.
He turned to the other boys after she closed the door, all set to say “I told you so.”
But before he could get the words out, they were laughing.
Laughing hysterically, the way he did sometimes.
Only they weren’t laughing at nothing.
They were laughing at Scarlet. And at him.
“You idiot—that’s no woman.”
He had no idea what they were talking about.
They found that even funnier.
“Come on,” suggested Nicky Colletti, who had already enlisted and would die in Saigon seven months later, “let’s sneak up the fire escape to her window.”
Afraid of what they might do, he accompanied them.
He’ll never forget the heady thrill of that first moment he glimpsed her through the window, left wide open in the heat, as she soaked in a tub full of bubbles with no idea that she was being watched.
He’ll never forget the sheer horror of the next moment, when he spotted her beautiful, luxurious hair sitting on a wig stand on the vanity.
Even then, he tried to convince himself that the boys were wrong. That it didn’t mean anything. That a lot of women wore wigs when they got dressed up; that she had a beautiful head of hair beneath the turban.
He kept watching, and he calmed himself down, and for a little longer, he reveled in the forbidden pleasure of spying on her.
Then she stood and climbed out of the tub.
The humiliating truth hit him like a train, and he couldn’t breathe.
The other boys were laughing so hard they had to scramble down off the fire escape before they fell.
He could feel the emotion welling up inside of him, aching in his throat, stinging his eyes.
Only babies cry.
So he laughed.
He laughed until it hurt, and then he laughed until it didn’t hurt anymore.
Leaving for work later, Scarlet didn’t close the window. It was too hot that night.
The moon was full.
And when Scarlet came home early in the morning, he was waiting.
PART IV
8:26
Chapter Twenty-one
“In another week or two,” Randy tells Lucinda as they climb out of his car and start walking toward the sandy path to the beach, “you won’t be able to get close to this parking spot.”
“Even at night?”
“Maybe—if there’s a monsoon or something. Otherwise, forget it. Memorial Day to Labor Day, this place is jammed.”
Memorial Day, Lucinda knows, is exactly two weeks from today.
The next full moon is exactly one week from today.
She looks up at the wedge of moon riding in the black night sky amid thousands of stars.
Randy follows her gaze. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t.”
“I can’t help it.”
He’s still out there somewhere, undoubtedly plotting his next murder.
She’d spent an entire week in Denver in a futile wait for something to surface. Sensing that Danielle Hendry was murdered in a mountainous, wooded area, Lucinda tried her best to pinpoint the locale for the searchers.
She couldn’t come up with anything. Failure has been a bitter pill to swallow.
Neal tried to comfort her when she got back home, reminding her that she was out of her element. She’s never been to Denver before. The city is surrounded by vast stretches of mountainous, wooded terrain.
But Lucinda knows her failure had nothing to do with that.
She’s worked cases far from home before. Once, in the Berkshires, she successfully narrowed a search party’s wilderness efforts to within a few yards of where a hiker’s body was discovered near the fork of a mountain stream.
The problem this time wasn’t that she was physically in unfamiliar territory.
It was that she was emotionally in unfamiliar territory.
She’s not accustomed, when working a case, to feeling vulnerable, fearing that her own life might be in danger.
Nor is she accustomed to letting her personal relationships interfere with her work.
The truth is, she was distracted because she missed Randy. She didn’t want to miss him, but she had.
She didn’t want to feel accountable to him when at last she returned his call and admitted she was in Denver, but she had.
She didn’t want to go running to him practically the moment she returned to the East Coast, but she had.
They didn’t discuss what h
ad—and hadn’t—happened between them up to that point, and they haven’t since. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement to forgive, and to forge ahead—as friends, if nothing else.
So far—nothing else.
They cross between the grassy dunes and tilted board fences toward the surf pounding at the end of the path. Lucinda’s fear of the dark tries to get the better of her, but she can’t let it. Randy is with her, and there’s some light from the moon reflecting off the water.
“I just can’t believe we’re no closer to finding this guy than we were last month.”
“I thought we said we weren’t going to talk about that tonight, Lucinda.”
“That was over dinner. And we didn’t.”
Sharing a pizza and a pitcher of beer, they’d talked about the closing this week on Carla’s house; Lucinda’s plans to attend Bradley’s opening night—at last—this coming weekend; the new apartment Randy had found to rent for the summer on the mainland; Cam’s hopes that she’ll uncover the name of the male student who may have been stalking Ava before she died.
The last topic was as close as they got to discussing the Night Watchman—which isn’t close at all, really, because thanks to Vic Shattuck’s insight, Lucinda now agrees with Randy that the notorious serial killer wasn’t responsible for Ava’s death.
The Watchman seemingly wants them to make a connection—but as Vic pointed out, he could be deliberately misleading them.
She and Randy emerge from the dunes onto the wide beach, where they came to walk off the tiramisu and cannoli they’d shared for dessert.
The salt air is balmy tonight, and there are a few people on the beach, most of them with dogs and flashlights. She reaches for Randy’s hand as they walk south along the water, the lights of Atlantic City glowing reassuringly in the distance.
He squeezes her hand, then laces his fingers with hers. The warm contact with his skin brings a burst of longing.
“The problem,” she tells him, to keep her mind from wandering to forbidden places, “is that we can guess when he’s going to strike again, but we have no way of knowing where.”
“Or whom.”
“I thought we were onto something with the lipstick theory.”
Danielle Hendry’s friends confirmed that she always, always wore red lipstick.
Jaime Dobiak occasionally had.
“Carla never wore red lipstick, though,” Randy reminds Lucinda.
“I know. That’s why it doesn’t fit.”
So it’s little comfort that she herself doesn’t wear lipstick at all. If she’s been targeted by the killer—as even the FBI suspects she has—there’s little she can do to protect herself.
Yes, she’s frightened. But that doesn’t mean she’s lost every last ounce of the courage that got her this far in life.
She’s as safe as she can be under the circumstances, short of going into hiding—which she refuses to consider. They’ve got her building under surveillance, are monitoring her phone calls and her e-mail for further communication, and her apartment is equipped with an alarm, multiple locks and dead-bolts—and a pistol.
That was Randy’s idea, backed up by Neal.
Yes, she knows how to use it. She learned years ago at a range and proved to be an excellent shot.
She just never imagined that she might actually have to use a gun in her own home to protect herself.
“Stay with me, Lucinda. Just for tonight. Please.”
“I’ll be fine driving home, especially after all that espresso. It’s not even that late. I’ll be home at a little after midnight if I leave in a half hour, and—”
“No,” he stops walking and turns toward her, grabbing her other hand to make her face him, “that’s not why I want you to stay. I know you’ll be fine if you go. I know you can take care of yourself. But, Lucinda…”
She realizes that he’s going to kiss her in the split second before he does.
His lips are against hers, and the years fall away.
If this were a movie, she finds herself thinking, it would end right here—credits rolling over the couple in each other’s arms at last.
But it isn’t a movie, it’s real life, and in real life, kisses end and relationships end.
Randy pulls back, still holding both her hands. “I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not.”
She smiles faintly, but before she can answer him, her BlackBerry buzzes in the pocket of her jacket.
She pulls it out. “I have to see who it is.”
“You could say you’re sorry—but I bet you’re not.”
Maybe.
Maybe not. Maybe she was tempted to see where this was going to go. Maybe the spell doesn’t have to be broken, she thinks—until she checks the phone and sees who’s calling.
“It’s Vic Shattuck,” she tells Randy. “I need to take this.”
“Saved by the bell, huh?”
Bell…
If I were a bell I’d be ringing….
That’s a song, an old one. Funny how the line popped into her head out of nowhere.
“Hello? Vic?”
She hears his voice, but she can’t make out what he’s saying above the static and the sound of the waves.
“Vic, I’ve got a bad connection. Can I call you back in a few minutes?”
He speaks again.
She shakes her head, frustrated.
To Randy, she says, “I’ve got to get better reception. Something’s going on. It sounds urgent.”
Randy sighs. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“I’m sorry,” she tells him as they walk back toward the path to the road, “and I really do mean it.”
“If I were a bell I’d go ding dong, ding dong diiiiing!”
Whirling across the Havana nightclub set, breathlessly concluding her big solo, Kelly falls into Julian’s arms.
“That was almost perfect!” Gary announces from beyond the footlights.
Almost.
Kelly and Julian look at each other.
“Just remember, you guys have just realized you’re in love, but Kelly, Sarah’s supposed to be rip-roaring drunk in this scene. Play it just a little sloppier. Julian, Sky is telling himself that he’s not going to take advantage of her. For a minute there, you looked like you were going to jump her bones. Take it down a notch. Got it?”
“Got it,” Julian tells Gary. To Kelly, under his breath, he says, “I won’t jump your bones till later.”
She wishes Gary and the crew and the lights would disappear.
Who’d have guessed that she’d fall in love, for real, with her leading man?
And he with her?
Yesterday, there was a huge color photo of the two of them in the newspaper. It was snapped at a full dress rehearsal. In the photo, Julian, wearing Sky Masterson’s baggy suit and fedora, is gazing adoringly at Kelly. She’s smiling demurely into the camera, looking glamorous in a silky blue 1950s dress, her hair done up with sophisticated waves, her face made up with sexy eyeliner and red lipstick.
Christina, obviously jealous that she hadn’t made the papers, had tried to convince Kelly that Julian gets involved with all his leading ladies. But she doesn’t know how he treats Kelly when they’re alone together; hasn’t heard the things he says; hasn’t seen the way he kisses her.
She doesn’t realize this is the real thing.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Julian’s a senior. He’s graduating in a few weeks, going on to grad school in California. Kelly’s heading home to Spokane for the summer, then will be back here in the fall—without Julian.
Just when her life is finally getting interesting, it’s going to come crashing down around her.
But she doesn’t want to think about that now.
They still have a whole week of dress rehearsals to look forward to, opening night on Friday, the weekend run, the cast party Sunday….
Then comes Monday. That’s what I’m dreading.
Monday, it’ll be all over.
Gazing out the win
dow at the lights that dot the Quantico campus, waiting for Lucinda to call him back, Vic is struck by the irony that he’s homesick.
Not homesick for New England and the new house, but for Kitty, of course, and for the simple things that have lately filled his retirement days: slippers and sweats, home-cooked meals, quiet days spent working on his book.
The deadline that seemed so distant now looms uncomfortably close, but he hasn’t found a moment to work on finishing the manuscript. Since he’s gotten here he’s eaten, slept, and breathed the case.
It’s what he thought he wanted—what he missed so desperately, in those early months after forced retirement. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to be here now. He wants, more than anything, to locate the unsub and bring him down.
But once he does, Vic suspects he’ll no longer look back wistfully at his career. He’ll be grateful to go back to his new life, far from the intense bustle of Quantico.
“Maybe we should think about taking a cruise with the Gudlaugs this summer,” Kitty suggested when he spoke to her last night. “I’ve been looking through that brochure Dave sent, and I think we might have fun.”
“Maybe,” Vic told her, thinking salsa dancing, bingo playing, and buffet-eating sound pretty good compared to what he’s been doing lately.
The phone rings. Lucinda.
“I’m sorry,” she says breathlessly. “I couldn’t hear you at all when you called. I’m in a better spot now. What’s up?”
“Danielle Hendry turned up.”
She gasps. “Alive?”
“No.”
It doesn’t take her long to absorb that. She never believed Danielle would be found alive.
“Where was she?”
“In a wooded part of the mountains—like you said. Some boy scout took a tumble off a steep trail and landed next to what was left of her.”
“What a nightmare for the boy.”
“No kidding.” It wasn’t pretty, Vic hears. She’s been out there with the wild animals for a few weeks now. The poor kid will never be the same.
“Was she wearing the lipstick?”
“No way to tell. But she was wearing a watch.”
“Freestyle,” Lucinda says, “and engraved with April 20, and the longitude and latitude, and stopped at 7:44.”
Dead Before Dark Page 34