Live Ringer

by Lynda Fitzgerald

  “You’re a jerk,” Sheryl said, collapsing on the barstool.

  “And you’re a disgrace,” he said, turning his back on her.

  After Joe signed the receipt, he grabbed Allie’s purse off the bar and took her by the hand, pulling her toward the door.

  “We can’t leave Sheryl here,” Allie said, looking over her shoulder to where Sheryl sat on her stool, staring after them.

  Joe hesitated for a minute. “Shit.” He pulled two twenties out of his wallet and tossed them on the bar. “Call her a cab,” he said over his shoulder to the bartender.

  Allie felt too humiliated by a cop in uniform dragging her out of the bar to put up any real resistance. When they got to the parking lot, he steered her in the direction of his marked car, parked in a handicap spot.

  “What about my Jeep?” she protested.

  “You can get it tomorrow,” he growled. “You’re in no condition to drive.” He opened the front passenger door and pushed her inside, earning her a few stares from people in the parking lot.

  “Why don’t you handcuff me and stick me in the back?” she demanded as he slid behind the wheel.

  He stared over at her for a long moment, his face unreadable. “Don’t tempt me. You have no business putting yourself in danger like this. There’s a killer out there, and he’s killing women who look like you.”

  “Women? Plural?”

  He put the car in gear and shot out of the lot, turning left on 520. He seemed to be debating whether to tell her more. Finally, he said, “We got a hit on like murders. A woman was killed in Vero a little more than a month ago. Similar story. Strangled. Washed ashore south of Sebastian. That’s her photo.” He pointed to a piece of paper on the seat.

  The paper lay face down. Allie didn’t want to look. Drunk as she might be, she knew what she’d see. “Go ahead. Take a look at it.”

  She flipped it over and left it lying on the seat. At first, she thought it was the woman she found at the jetty. Then, she began to notice subtle differences in the grainy fax. This woman appeared older, early forties maybe, judging by the lines around her eyes and mouth. Her hair seemed to be light brown, but it was frosted. The face seemed fuller, the cheekbones less defined, but the differences were minor compared to the similarities. Light hair, light eyes.

  “She looks like the other one.”

  “And you look like both.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I don’t look like either of them. Especially her,” she said, motioning toward the picture.

  Joe stared at her, incredulous. “Are you kidding? It could be a picture of you ten years from now.”

  Allie swallowed hard. She still couldn’t see a resemblance, but Joe was the second person to say it. “Why didn’t Sheryl tell me about this?”

  “She doesn’t know. We got the fax a couple of hours ago. That’s how I knew you were out. I came by to tell you, and you weren’t there. I drove around trying to spot your car.” He refolded the paper with one hand and stuck it in his pocket. “For God’s sake, don’t tell anyone. We’re trying to keep it quiet for now. We don’t want to start a panic.”

  “Don’t you think the public has the right to know?”

  He shot her a sideways glance. “Don’t start that reporter crap on me.”

  “That’s not reporter crap,” she shot back. “That’s potential victim crap. What about other women out there who look like her? Don’t you think they should be forewarned? A few other women resembling her are probably out there.”

  Some stiffness went out of his shoulders. “Right now, we don’t know exactly what we’ve got. Too many differences. This victim was older. No scarf around her neck. Her hair wasn’t really blonde. All we know for sure is that two women looking a lot alike were killed in a similar manner. If we get more, we’ll deal with it then.”

  Allie folded her arms across her chest. “If there’s nothing to worry about, why did you drag me out of Lester’s like some kind of criminal?”

  “Because two women who look like you were killed in a similar manner,” he said, turning on to her street, “and because you and dimwit were too drunk to drive.”

  She saw Mrs. Feelie’s curtain open an inch and then fall back in place, and she remembered they were in a marked car. She groaned and turned back to Joe. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Put Sheryl down.”

  “I don’t put Sheryl down.”

  “Yes, you do. In the bar. Everyone heard you. Don’t you realize how that must have made her feel?”

  He pulled up in front of her house and put the car in park. “I hope it embarrassed the hell out of her,” he said, irritably. “She’s an officer of the law, for God’s sake. She has no business going out half naked and getting sloppy drunk. If she’s determined to make a spectacle of herself, let her go to Orlando or Miami—somewhere out of Brevard County where no one knows her.”

  “Are there rules against her having some fun?”

  “It wouldn’t have been fun if she’d ended up like those kids this afternoon,” he said.

  His words chilled Allie, but she was still angry on Sheryl’s behalf. “You didn’t have to embarrass her like that.”

  “She won’t remember it tomorrow.”

  Allie wasn’t so sure. She saw Sheryl’s face when Joe pulled Allie from the bar. There were more than hurt feelings in the look she gave them. In any case, there was no reasoning with Joe. She reached for the door handle.

  Joe turned in the seat so he faced her. “I’m asking you to be careful until we find out what’s going on. That’s all. There might be no connection between the two murders, but we don’t know that.”

  Now, he sounded more like the Joe she remembered, and she softened. “Will you call me if you find out anything more?”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll come by first thing in the morning and tell you in person. That way, I can take you to get your car.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I can call a cab.”

  Allie could feel his eyes on her in the darkness. “I know I don’t have to. I want to.”

  Before she could react, he climbed out of the car and opened her door. He walked her to the house and watched, as she fumbled to unlock the deadbolt. At least he didn’t embarrass her further by taking the key and opening it. She half feared he’d try to kiss her, but he stepped back, as she entered. “I’ll take a quick look around, so if you hear someone outside your window, it’s me.”

  “OK. I ….” What could she say? Thank you for manhandling me out of a bar and dragging me home? Thanks for scaring the hell out of me? She settled for “Good night.”

  She stood inside the door, as he circled the perimeter of the house. She didn’t move until she heard his car start and drive slowly away. Then, she sagged against the wall. On the ride home, she would have sworn she was sober, but now the floor didn’t feel level. It didn’t take much liquor to go to her head, the head spinning like an over-wound child’s top.

  She made her way into the bedroom. Stripping off her clothes and dropping them beside the bed, she crawled between the sheets. She felt the bed shift, as Spook jumped up, but she ignored it. He scratched at the covers and circled twice before settling against her leg. As she watched the ceiling rotate slowly, she thought about what Joe had said. Somewhere out there was a murderer who hated blonde-haired, light-eyed women enough to kill them. Dead ringers. Wasn’t that what Sheryl called them? Allie shivered. That didn’t automatically make her a target, but it sure upped the odds.

  Two hours later, a sound startled her out of sleep. A minute later, she heard, “Oh, damn. Shit.” She crawled out of bed and peeked around the wall at the end of the hall, where she had a straight shot to the backdoor window. She saw a shape hopping from foot to foot. Feelie. He must have stepped on the broken glass she’d forgotten to clean up. After a minute, he hopped away. “That’ll teach you,” she muttered, heading back into the bedroom. In five minutes, she was asleep, and this time, she staye
d that way until morning.

  *

  Allie awoke at seven to another beautiful day. Beautiful, at least, judging by the blinding glare coming in the frosted jalousies of the front door. She didn’t feel equal to it. Her head was pounding, and her mouth felt like crumbled parchment, reminding her why she rarely drank more than one glass of wine. She needed water—lots of water—and she needed it now.

  She pulled on knit shorts and a shirt and gingerly made her way toward the kitchen. Spook followed and looked expectantly at his bowl. “Sorry, pup,” Allie said, grabbing a glass out of the cabinet. “Priorities.”

  She chugged two classes of tepid water before she fixed the coffeepot. Cape Canaveral water wasn’t the best in the world. In fact, it might have ranked worst in the world. Maybe that’s why her coffee always had that rusty, dead-animal-in-the-well taste. She’d hoped buying good coffee would help, but it didn’t. She made a mental note to buy bottled water.

  After dumping some food in Spook’s dish, she added water and grounds to the coffeepot. It took an eternity to begin dripping. She would have to replace the ancient pot, another change she didn’t want to think about at that moment. Finally, enough thick, black liquid had dripped in the bottom pot to constitute a cup. She held the top over the sink while she poured the contents into a cup. It tasted bitter and scalded her tongue, and she took it like the medicine it was. When she’d finished it, there was enough in the bottom carafe for a refill, which she sipped more slowly.

  Instead of looking out the window, her gaze rested on the sand-crusted cup on the windowsill. She had assumed a neighbor returned it, but she hadn’t seen any of her neighbors, except the reluctant dog sitter and Mrs. Feelie on the next block, and she hadn’t seen either of them at the jetty the day she found the body. She knew the houses on either side of her were occupied because she saw cars in the driveways and lights on at night, and occasionally, she heard a bit of TV noise or laughter coming from either direction. Could one of those people have brought it back? Joe said it wasn’t him. It could have been Rupert Cornelius because he knew her aunt, except that he left the jetty before her. Did he come back and stumble on the cup, or was it her stalker?

  As if conjured by her thoughts, she saw him walking on the beach behind her house. She could see only the top of him—the dunes blocked part of her view—but the part she saw was enough to infuriate her. She might have been afraid if it was late at night or if her hangover were less severe, but at seven-thirty on a sunny morning, feeling mean as a snake, she was ready for a confrontation. Why was this man following her? Spying on her? She knew nothing about him except his name, and she intended to find out more, like why the hell he was following her around.

  She slammed her cup down on the counter and yanked open the back door. She wouldn’t put up with it another minute.

  Before she took four steps, she felt white-hot pain shoot up her leg. As she fell to her knees, crying out, she saw his head turn. A second later, he came bounding up the stairs. She lowered herself into a sitting position, glass all around her. Her foot was bleeding badly. The pain took her breath away. She tried to crawl away, putting her hand down on another piece of glass, as he stepped over the rail onto the patio. With a sharp cry, she yanked it back up and scooted as far away as she could get, huddling in the corner, wide-eyed, as he approached her.

  He kicked the glass from around her and knelt. “How bad is it?” he asked, reaching for her foot.

  Pain effectively wiped away the fear she should have felt. “I don’t know,” she said, half sobbing.

  He hesitated, his hand inches from her foot. “May I look at it?”

  She nodded and bit her lip to keep from crying out, as he turned her foot over and examined it. His movements were sure and gentle. He lowered her foot to the patio. “Stay right here,” he said, disappearing into the house.

  Where did he think she would go? She heard drawers opening and closing before he came back with a clean dishtowel. It could have been a butcher knife, and she couldn’t have raised a hand to stop him. He fashioned a compress of the towel and pressed it against her foot. It hurt. A lot.

  He removed the towel for a second. “I don’t think there’s any glass still in it, but it’ll need sutures.” He gave her hand a cursory onceover. “Not too bad.” Easy for him to say.

  He got to his feet and kicked the rest of the glass away. He wore shoes, she noticed. “My car’s too far away for me to carry you,” he said with a grimace. “We’ll have to take yours.”

  Allie blinked up at him, confused. She couldn’t get a handle on what was happening. “Take my car where?”

  “To the hospital. For sutures.”

  She wouldn’t get into a car with this man, not with a killer out there somewhere. As far as she knew, he was it. On the other hand, he didn’t act like a killer. He could easily have strangled her before now. Still … .

  “I can drive myself.”

  He watched her closely, his face serious. “OK,” he said after a minute. “Let’s see if you can stand up.”

  He wrapped the dishtowel around her foot. Then, he offered her his hands and slowly pulled her to her feet. Or foot. When she tried to put weight on the injured foot, the pain blinded her. She felt sweat break out on her forehead, as tiny lights burst in her head. The next thing she knew, he’d lifted her off the ground. “Where are your keys?” he demanded. When she didn’t answer, he said, “It’s me or an ambulance. Take your pick.”

  Forget the ambulance. The indignity would kill her if she didn’t bleed to death first. “Purse. On the kitchen counter.”

  He carried her into the house, kicking the door shut behind them. She knew he could kill her now without any witnesses, but he didn’t. Still awkwardly holding her, he fished around in her purse until he found her keys. Then, he slung her purse over his shoulder and let them out the front door.

  That’s when she remembered. “Oh, God. I forgot. I don’t have my car.” She truly didn’t want to go in an ambulance. She was about to suggest calling a cab, but before she could, he turned and carried her inside, putting her down on the sofa.

  “I’ll be right back. Keep your hand pressed against that towel,” he said, heading out the door at a fast jog.

  Spook came out from behind the couch. Maybe he wondered if Allie would go away, and she would never come back like her aunt. He jumped up on the couch beside her, staying out of arm’s reach. Allie spent the next few minutes watching the bright red blood spread across the towel and onto the sofa. She would have a hard time getting the stain out. Maybe she could pretend it was a flower, except that blood dried brown. A dead flower, then. She thought about reupholstering. She thought about everything except how badly her foot hurt. She wondered where he parked his car and why he’d parked it somewhere and then gone walking on the beach, but she didn’t much care at that point, as long as he came back.

  Finally, she heard a car drive up in front of the house. A second later, he rushed inside, and Spook ran back behind the couch. He discarded the bloody towel and replaced it with a clean one. Looking over his shoulder as he carried her to the car, Allie could see a trail of droplets on the concrete walk. Her sun-worshipping neighbor was in her yard, pretending not to watch.

  He put Allie in the back across the seat, using her purse to elevate her injured foot. He refolded the towel and pressed it against the cut. “Hold this,” he said, replacing his hand with hers. “Don’t press too hard. There might still be glass in there. Steady pressure.”

  “Are you a doctor?” she asked, as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

  His eyes met hers in the rearview mirror. “No, but I have accident-prone nephews,” he said, easing on to the street. “I could probably sew you up with a standard needle and thread, but it’ll hurt a lot less with some local anesthesia.” Allie could see the smile in his eyes. Not the eyes of a killer. She hoped.

  “Where’s the nearest hospital?” he asked, as he pulled out on to A1A.

  She thought for
a moment. “On 520. A few miles west of the intersection.”

  Cape Canaveral Hospital was a sleek, modern building about two miles down on the right, stuck out on a manmade finger of land pointing into the Banana River, but that’s not what Allie saw. She saw her aunt in a narrow bed with side rails—tubes and wires connecting her to various machines. She’d never seen her that way, but the vision persisted. Lou had died here. Allie closed her eyes and bit her lip, as she waited for the vision to release her.

  “We’re almost there,” he said, misreading the cause of her pain.

  “I’m all right,” she said, opening her eyes. And she was.

  He pulled the car to an abrupt stop under the cover of the emergency room overhang. She thought he’d go in and get a wheelchair, but he wrapped the towel around her foot and scooped her up in his arms, storming through the automatic doors and toward a woman sitting at a desk across the room. The woman was one of those stalwart types, broad across the chest with gray hair worn straight and short. No makeup softened the stern lines of her face. No jewelry hung from her ears or wrist. Her colorless emergency room smock did nothing to improve her appearance. Allie got the feeling she’d seen everything and liked very little of it.

  “Where can I put her?” he asked.

  She raised one eyebrow, looking from him to Allie, then to her foot. “Is she bleeding to death?” she asked, unimpressed.

  His mouth thinned. “No.”

  She tilted her head toward the other side of the room to a row of vinyl chairs against the wall. “Then, you can put her over there until we get her insurance information. And you,” she said regally, “can have a seat right here.” She motioned to a chair in front of her desk.

  He stared at the woman for a long, steady minute, his face inscrutable. The woman began to squirm. Finally, he sat down in the chair she indicated, holding Allie on his lap.

  If her foot didn’t hurt so bad, she’d have laughed. “No, it’s OK—” Allie began. A look from him silenced her. He rested her foot, bloody towel and all, on the desk. “What information do you need?”