She'll Never Live

by Hunter Morgan

  "How? How do you know that?" Kurt stood in front of her desk. He didn't appear to be getting any more sleep than she was. And right now, he was getting pressure from two sides. There was pressure from the governor's office to get this task force off the ground, and she wasn't cutting him a break. Not for a moment. If you threw in the news media and all the speculation in papers and magazines, it seemed as if all of America had an opinion on how the killer needed to be caught.

  "How do you know?" he repeated, his impatience bordering on resentment. He perched on the end of the chair across her desk from her.

  "Because Marissa was never there. Her mother said she would never have eaten at a diner."

  "Maybe Marissa Spicer went into the diner without her mother knowing it." He gestured emphatically with one hand. "Most twenty-two-year-olds don't tell their parents everywhere they go, especially not when they've just moved out of the house."

  "I asked her friends here in town, too. They said it was big joke with them. They all wanted meat loaf and mashed potatoes but Marissa would never go to the diner because the food wasn't healthy. And Loretta, the woman who owns the place, who's there sunup to sundown, swears Marissa was never there. The waitress, the new dishwasher." She counted off on her fingers. "No one ever saw her there because she never stepped foot in the place."

  "Okay, if it isn't the diner, why not a bar?" He crossed his arms over his chest. "All these women could have been in any bar in this town."

  She shook her head, refusing to give in. She didn't know how she knew what she knew, she just did. "April Provost didn't go to bars."

  "April Provost?"

  "The woman on vacation, walking her mother-in-law's dog when she disappeared. Victim number two," she said testily, annoyed that he couldn't remember her name. She'd gone over every scrap of information she had on the victims so many times that she felt as if she knew each one intimately, even the women she had never met. "April and her husband didn't go to any bars while they were here."

  "Okay, so I'm not as familiar with the victims as you are, Claire. That doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about."

  "You're not listening to me. Look at my chart." She grabbed her legal pad and spun it around for him to see. She'd made a chart comparing each victim and the places they'd been in Albany Beach in the two weeks prior to their abduction. She'd re-interviewed friends and family members, coworkers, retracing each woman's steps.

  "You only started with the places the tourist had been?" He didn't look up from the chart.

  "She was in town the shortest period of time. It makes sense to start there."

  "So what if he just picked her up?" Kurt scoffed. "Maybe he hadn't stalked her like the others. Maybe he just came upon her and on impulse, threw her in his car."

  "That's not the way this guy works." She tapped her pen in a column. "Look at this. This is when it came to me—when Marissa's mother told me that she had been in the hospital emergency room the week before for an allergic reaction to something she'd eaten."

  Kurt frowned as he studied the heading in the box followed by seven check marks below. "The hospital?" he mocked. "You think one of your doctors is killing these women?"

  "Could be. Scalpel. Surgical gloves. Bleeding them to death. He's subduing them with some kind of chemical—most likely an anesthesia of some sort, according to the ME. How else would he have gotten them into his car without leaving any physical marks?" She threw up her hands. "I just don't know why I didn't think of this sooner."

  "You said he knocked the last two around."

  She sat back in her chair. She wasn't going to back down on this; she knew she was right. "That's different. I sense he's hitting them now for a different reason."

  "And why might that be?" Kurt lifted a dark eyebrow.

  He was mocking her and she wondered how she could have ever fancied herself in love with him. He could be mean when he wanted to be. "Because he's pissed off about something. Something isn't going right. He..." She thought aloud, keeping in mind her conversation with Graham's sister. "He's not being satisfied as he once was."

  "This is all speculation, Claire." Kurt shoved the notepad back at her.

  "Speculation? A couple of weeks ago when I talked to you, you told me you thought I was right on track. A couple of weeks ago, I was getting atta boys from you all over the place."

  "That was before you started making this personal." He met her gaze across the desk, his dark eyes fixed on hers. "Before you started using words like you can feel this or you sense that."

  Claire wanted to cite the training they had both had on the differences between men and women in the workforce, in law enforcement in particular, but she could tell by the tone of his voice that, right now, it would be a waste of breath.

  "I'm telling you," she said, pointing her finger at him, knowing how much he hated that. Not caring. "The first time he sees them, it's at the hospital." She tapped her temple. "That's where they catch his eye."

  He didn't say anything, so she went on. "It makes sense, Kurt. Think about it. Three weeks before her murder, Patti had a cyst on her breast biopsied. April was in two mornings before her death; a reaction to a wasp sting. Anne Hopkins had blood tests and a chest X-ray ordered by her family physician as part of an annual physical, while she was home from college. Two weeks before her death. Kristen Addison had a blood test, eleven days before she disappeared. Brandy Thomas had a pregnancy test." She stared at Kurt across the desk. "Six days before Marissa Spicer disappeared from the Laundromat parking lot, she was in the ER with an allergic reaction to a food she'd eaten at a salad bar in town."

  "I'm not convinced." As he rose, he grabbed his suit jacket off the back of the chair and started for the door.

  "When are you moving in?" she asked.

  The task force's takeover was imminent, but the powers that be were still arguing over what pile of money the project would be funded by. Who would pay the overtime? Who would pay for the additional equipment, cars, surveillance?

  "I don't know. Next week, probably."

  "So, until next week"—she began to busy herself shuffling papers that really didn't need shuffling—"my keeping you up to date is just a courtesy?"

  He opened the door. "You could say that."

  He paused. "Damn it, Claire, don't put yourself in a worse position than you're already in."

  He sounded so damned arrogant, so condescending.

  "Cooperate with us and—"

  "Cooperate with you," she interrupted. "And you'll help me keep my job?" She glanced up thinking that if she had anything breakable within reach, she might have thrown it at him. That's what Katharine Hepburn would have done in one of her movies. "Is that what you were going to say?"

  "No." He threw his suit jacket over his shoulder. "What I was going to say, was that if you cooperate with me, with the task force, maybe we can help you catch this guy. At the risk of sounding like a bad line from a song, we can do it together."

  "It won't go down that way and you know it. This little old Podunk town police force will be overrun with suits. The next thing we know, our budget will be scrutinized, personnel files will be dug through. Someone from the state will start counting beans, trying to figure if we've got enough kidney and lima on the force, making sure we didn't overlook any chick peas, even if they scored low on the admittance tests."

  "I'm not going to talk to you when you're like this. I'm just not." He lifted both hands in surrender. "I'll call you tomorrow. Earlier if there's any news from the attorney general or the governor's office."

  He walked out before she could form a clever retort. It was just as well, because she didn't have one. Katharine always had writers to provide her with snappy rejoinders.

  Almost immediately following Kurt's exodus, there was a knock on her doorjamb. "Claire?" Graham peered around the door.

  She smiled, relieved to see a friendly face, despite her embarrassment about the night Marissa had gone missing. "How'd you get past the front desk?
I told Jewel not to let anyone by."

  "Anyone but Humphrey Bogart, according to Jewel." He walked in, carrying a white plastic bag from the diner.

  "You convinced my receptionist that you were Humphrey Bogart?" She dropped into her chair. It was one-thirty, and she'd only been in the office since seven, but she felt as if she'd been here at least two days.

  "Actually, I'm not sure she knows who Humphrey Bogart is." He pulled a Styrofoam container from the bag and slid it across her desk. "But I brought her lunch and she let me slip by. I took Ashley something, too." He glanced up. "I know I said I wouldn't call. I really meant to stay away, give you some breathing space."

  Claire decided just to ignore the whole subject of her going to his place and throwing herself into his arms. Into his bed. She popped open the Styrofoam lid to find a cheeseburger, a pickle and chips and grimaced. "Did you bring Ashley red meat?"

  "Nope. A chef's salad with cheese and egg, no meat to sully the mix." He held up one finger. "On a paper plate, mind you. No Styrofoam for Ashley, I can assure you."

  Claire chuckled. "Red meat is perfect for me. Bless you. I haven't eaten since... " She exhaled as she picked up the burger made on a whole wheat bun, with mushrooms and Swiss cheese. This was a guy who paid attention to details. "I don't know. Sometime yesterday."

  "I figured as much." He sat back in the chair in front of her desk and rested his ankle on his knee. "So was that him?" He hooked his thumb in the direction of the door.

  "Who?"

  "The blustery one who passed me in the hall. He the old cop boyfriend?"

  She took a bite of the burger that was still warm and frowned. "How do you know about Kurt?"

  "The gossip twins, Mary Lou Joseph and Betty Friegal. They were in the store yesterday. Buying envelopes."

  She lifted a brow and took another bite. She knew she shouldn't talk with her mouth full, but she really was starving. "And they found it necessary to discuss my love life, or lack thereof, with you, while purchasing a box of envelopes? Envelopes, I might add, that would be much cheaper at the Big Mart than an office supply store." She grabbed a chip. "You let them talk about me?"

  He shrugged, pulled a pile of napkins from the bag, and pushed them across the desk at her. "I take my inside info where I can get it. And they didn't buy a box. They wanted two envelopes." He tapped the corner of her mouth.

  Claire grabbed a napkin and wiped away a smear of mustard. Mustard, not ketchup. She never ate ketchup on her burger and apparently he had noticed that, too.

  "Yup, that was the ex-boyfriend. Captain Kurt Gallagher of the Delaware State Police. He's been appointed head of the task force that's about to boot me out of my chair."

  He pointed at her. "The gossip twins did not tell me that."

  "Probably saving it for their trip next week to buy a pen to address the two envelopes."

  He laughed. "Actually, you'd be surprised how many senior citizen customers I have who come in a couple of times a week for little things like that." He shrugged. "Keeps them busy." He leaned back in the chair. "Hey, I talked to my sister the other night. She said she talked to you. She or her colleagues any help?"

  "I think so." Claire set the burger down. She'd eaten only half of it, but she was full. Six murdered girls in three months time would do that to you—take away your appetite. "But the most help I've gotten this week was from Marissa Spicer."

  He gave a slight do tell nod.

  She pointed to the door and he reached over the back of his chair and closed it. "You didn't hear this from me."

  "Claire." He leaned forward, studying her with those honest blue eyes of his. "You don't have to tell me anything. I wouldn't want you to put your job or your integrity on the line for me. I was wrong to have come to you in the first place, offering my help."

  "Save it." She gave a wave. "I think we're a little beyond that kind of stuff, don't you? Truth is, you're the first decent person who's paid any attention to me in a very long time. As for the job, screw it and my integrity. No one will listen to me, but I know where my killer is. Kurt thinks I'm crazy, that I'm on a wild goose chase, but all along when I thought he was choosing his victims in the diner, I was wrong." She grabbed a chip from the Styrofoam box. "It's not the diner, it's an even better place to blend into the crowd, to make friends, to find young women to kill..."

  He waited. He was a great audience.

  "The hospital," she whispered. "He's at the hospital. He works there, or he has a job that takes him there regularly."

  Claire could see by Graham's expression that he was already considering the possibilities.

  "I mean, think about it," she continued. "Doctors, male nurses, aides, technicians, office workers."

  "Ambulance and paramedic crews, volunteers, firemen," he added. "Even policemen."

  She frowned. "I told you. It's not Ryan McCormick."

  He sat back, opening his arms. "I'm just saying."

  "Well, don't." She glanced at the lunch he had had been so kind to bring her. Not to mention the fact that he had fed her finicky daughter and her receptionist. "Sorry, I'm a little touchy. I can also include people who don't work at the hospital, but go there regularly. Like my buddy Chain, who visits his grandmother in the nursing home."

  "You don't really think Ashley's boyfriend is the killer, do you?" he asked. He was quiet for a minute. "I mean, a part of you, maybe, might like it to be him. Then you could send him to the electric chair."

  "The State of Delaware executes by lethal injection," she said drolly. Then, against her will, she smiled. "You're right." She slid back in her chair and tipped her head to stare at the ceiling panels overhead. "It's not him."

  "So now what?"

  She stared at the ceiling for a long moment, then looked at him again. "I think I'll wander on over to the hospital. Chat with a couple of people, get the lay of the land."

  He smiled as he got up. "You know, I like you this way."

  She tried not to think about how she'd been that night when she showed up at his door. Pretty close to a nervous breakdown. "What way?" She rose and gathered a file and several notepads.

  "Confident. All kick-ass."

  She laughed, mostly because the words sounded so funny coming from such a straight-laced guy. She laughed, too, out of relief, tickled he was such a nice guy not to mention what a mess she had been the other night.

  "Hey, you want me to take Ashley back to the store with me?" he asked. "Put her to work in the storeroom or something? She seems pretty bored."

  Claire considered his offer for a moment. She knew he was right; Ashley was bored to tears spending twelve hours a day in the police station with her mother. Not even the TV and DVD player that Robinson had hooked up for the teen could keep her occupied that long every day. And Claire knew she couldn't keep her with her forever. "Nah," she said after a moment. "Thanks, but she can just stay here. I'll be back in an hour or so to get her. Maybe I'll kick out of here early and we'll go for a walk on the boardwalk. Go see a movie."

  He stood in the doorway. "You're sure? I can bring her to you later. Meet you."

  She knew what he was getting at. He'd let Ashley hang out for a few hours with him at the store and then they'd hook up for dinner. Maybe the movie.

  If he took her daughter off her hands for a few hours, she certainly couldn't not invite him to go out with them. And it was tempting. She liked him so much; he was good for her. Good in bed, too.

  She almost smiled.

  But she still meant what she had told him weeks ago. She couldn't do this thing right now. She couldn't possibly have a relationship and make it work.

  "Thanks, but she'll be fine." She looked up from her desk as she grabbed a pen. "And, hey, thanks for the lunch, too. You're the best."

  "I want you to remember when this is all over that you said that." He gave her a look that was so sexy, it could have made a woman police chief forget where she was, at least for a moment.

  "Leave now," she said, pointing to the door
.

  "Or what?" he asked quietly. "You'll throw yourself into my arms again." He lifted a brow.

  "Out!"

  She was still smiling when she walked out into the bright sunshine of the afternoon, past the dumpster where they had found Marissa's body, and got into her police car.

  * * *

  That night, the Bloodsucker tried to concentrate on the movie on TV. It was bank robbery week on TNT, and he was watching a movie about Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army. As he watched the recreation of the Hibernia Bank holdup in San Francisco, he jiggled his leg.

  "You should have worn a mask, stupid bitch," he said, watching "Patty" walk into the bank with a machine gun in her hand. "What? You didn't know banks had security cameras?" He threw himself back in his favorite chair and snatched up the remote control.

  "Idiots," he declared. "The world is full of them."

  Max, who lay asleep on the rug in front of the TV, lifted his head to look at his master.

  The Bloodsucker punched the channel button. "If they'd worn masks, maybe they wouldn't have gotten caught. You see what I'm saying, Max?"

  The dog whined.

  Disgusted, the Bloodsucker flipped through the channels, but nothing caught his fancy. It was late. He knew he should just go to bed. It was a workday tomorrow. But he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. Not after what had happened this afternoon.

  He hadn't actually seen Claire Bear at the hospital. Hadn't talked to her, but he heard she was nosing around the emergency room. He heard from several sources that she had been asking questions about the dead women. He knew she already knew when they'd been to the hospital. She'd been in the records office days ago with releases from the families, granting her permission to look over their medical records. But just knowing they had been there wasn't enough for her. She'd come back, sniffing around, talking all friendly like, laughing with employees as if she were one of them. Only she wasn't.

  Claire Bear was one of those people who was nice to you when she wanted something from you. Granny had been like that. Crazy old bitch. Granny was as nice as you please to the butcher when she wanted a little extra ground meat. She was as sweet as honey when she needed another day to pay her bill before they shut off the electric. But was she ever nice to him? Her own grandson? Was she nice to him ever?