“Don’t blame yourself, Sergeant,” she begged him. “It’s really my fault. If I hadn’t been stupid enough to sneak away and leave those messages for him, he wouldn’t even have come.”
“But that wasn’t stupid,” he protested. “Those messages flushed a killer out of hiding. If I’d been thinking like a cop instead of a worried— Instead of…letting my feelings get in the way…I’d have realized what might happen and called for backup sooner.”
Sandy couldn’t contain a smile. “So you have feelings for me, Sergeant?”
His frown melted into a lopsided grin. “As long as half of Investigative Services knows, I guess you ought to know too,” he told her. “I tried so valiantly to suppress them, Alessandra.”
“But why?”
He reached out and held the hand at the end of the cast. “I was attracted to you,” he said softly, “but I didn’t want to fall in love with you because I knew what that would do to my professional objectivity.” He bent and kissed her fingertips, sending a ripple of pleasure halfway up her arm. “And as long as you were involved with the Parmentier case, ethics forbade a relationship between us, anyway. So I fought it as hard as I could.”
“And I thought you were so stern and brusque because you disliked me,” she sighed.
“I was stern and brusque because I was concentrating on not thinking about kissing you.”
She smiled at him. “My mother has a wonderful saying, Sergeant—You don’t accomplish anything by just thinking about it. Let’s accomplish something now,” she invited softly.
As she watched, the pain in his eyes faded like smoke, leaving only two still pools of liquid silver that beckoned to her, beckoned irresistibly. He leaned closer, caressing her first with a look, then with his voice as he murmured, “Has anyone told you lately what a very special lady you are?”
His nearness was doing delicious things to her senses. “Not convincingly, Sarge,” she breathed. “Why don’t you give it a try?”
Gently, his lips settled over hers, sending a wave of pleasure rolling through her entire body, making her wish that she had two good arms to throw around his broad shoulders. Gently, his free hand slipped behind her neck and his fingers twined themselves in her hair.
The kiss deepened, joining them in an intimate solitude that erased everything but that moment. Wrapped in the sweet fragrance of flowers and lost in a swell of delightful sensation, Sandy felt herself melting into a steamy hot puddle in the hospital bed…
“Here’s that vase,” caroled the nurse, bustling back into the room.
Ted froze in mid-kiss and opened his eyes. As he reluctantly released her lips, he whispered, “To be continued, Ms. DiGianni.”
“Amen, Sergeant Gaine,” Sandy whispered fervently back.
Somehow Ted managed to keep a straight face as he handed the bouquet over to the smirking nurse and left. Joe was waiting for him near the elevators, and together they rode in pregnant silence down to the lower level parking area.
“Well?” prodded Joe as he unlocked his car.
“She’s terrific.” Ted sighed.
“Is that what you’re going to put in your report?”
“Do I look anxious to have Nielsen pull me off the case?” demanded Ted with mock severity. “How about Dooley? Is he conscious yet?”
“Nope,” Joe sighed, turning the key in the ignition. “He’s in a deep coma and the doctors don’t know when he’ll come out of it—if he wakes up at all. Meanwhile, Alf Michaels has been assigned to guard him, and needless to say, he is not a happy camper.”
Ted shot him a disbelieving look. “You’re joking. Dooley’s under police guard, and for Alessandra it’s you’re-on-your-own-thanks-a-lot-kid?”
“Not exactly,” admitted Joe with a faint smile. “I had a little chat with Michaels about keeping an eye on Alessandra, too. Their rooms are on the same floor. I couldn’t tell him about Mr. Vanish, of course. So I hinted that friends of Dooley’s might take it into their heads to blame her for what had happened to him, and if Michaels could arrange to walk past her door every now and then, we’d appreciate it.”
“I wish we could do more—it’s insane for a seasoned officer like Michaels to be guarding a vegetable.”
“Dooley’s in a coma right now, but there’s a chance he may open his eyes tomorrow and start screaming for a lawyer. In any case, he’s a confessed murderer, and regulations state clearly—”
“I know what the regulations say,” Ted grumbled.
“If it’ll make you feel any better, the hospital administrator isn’t crazy about the situation, either.” And with that, Joe put the Chevy in gear, pulled out of the parking spot and headed toward the exit.
“Listen, if I’m going to be helping you protect Alessandra from Mr. Vanish, I’ll need to know everything you two have dug up on him.”
“Sure,” said Ted. “I keep all my notes in a folder locked in the bottom drawer of my desk.”
Joe frowned. “Just notes? I thought you said you’d found Waldron’s file.”
“Alessandra’s hidden it in a safe place. Don’t worry—my notes include everything that either of us has figured out.”
“I should look at that file, partner. It could be that I’ll find something you both missed. Some vital clue.”
“It could be,” Ted agreed. “But I honestly don’t know where Bert’s file is right now, so I’m afraid we’ll just have to make do with going over my notes.”
Joe shrugged. “Okay, if we must.”
Investigative Services was lightly manned at that hour on a Sunday evening. Sergeant Coolidge was in, finishing some paperwork. He glanced up and waved a burly hand as they walked past his desk.
“Hey, look,” said Joe, pointing.
Byron was grimly lugging the huge vacuum cleaner into their workspace.
Ted glanced ruefully at his brown-bag dinner from Hamburger Harold’s. There would be no digesting of food once that monster machine began roaring in his ear. “So much for eating at our desks,” he muttered.
But almost as soon as the vacuum cleaner had disappeared through the entrance to their cubicle, Byron reappeared and began strolling happily away.
“Whoa, Byron!” called Joe, striding quickly to intercept him. “Aren’t you going to clean our carpet?”
Byron turned and smiled guilelessly at the two detectives. “It’s already cleaned,” he said with a characteristic shrug.
“Then aren’t you going to put away your carpet cleaner?” asked Ted.
Byron frowned, a little confused. “I did put it away.”
Ted jerked his head in the direction of their workspace. “In there?” he said, fighting to keep his voice free of irony or sarcasm.
It was difficult to know how to speak to Byron in a situation like this, hard to judge at what point expectations became unreasonable.
Byron’s brows knitted now, and he reached into his pocket for a well-folded piece of paper. Ted could see that it was a diagram of the entire office, the individual workspaces marked with numbers. Byron ran his finger around the diagram, obviously retracing his route that shift, and ended by triumphantly poking his finger several times into the square that denoted Joe and Ted’s working area.
“I was right,” he crowed. “It goes in there. See? That’s the highest number. Every day when I come to work, Mr. Tyler makes me a di-a-gram, to show me where he wants me to clean. Number one is where I start, and then number two, and then number three—”
“I think we understand, Byron,” Joe assured him. “And today he wanted you to finish up here, in our office?”
“It has the highest number,” said Byron solemnly.
“And when you’re finished, what are you supposed to do?” prompted Ted.
“I put away the carpet cleaner.”
Joe and Ted traded long-suffering looks. There had obviously
been a misunderstanding here as to the meaning of the phrase “put away”.
“Byron,” began Joe, “are you sure Mr. Tyler means for you to put away the carpet cleaner in the last office you clean? Doesn’t he want you to put all the cleaning supplies away in the same place?”
“No, he told me,” said Byron earnestly. “See, I made a mistake today. I had another di-a-gram in my pocket and I got mixed up and started in the wrong place. So I had to keep on until I was finished. Then I looked at the di-a-gram from today and I saw where I was supposed to finish, and I had to bring the carpet cleaner here to put it away.”
Joe tried again. “But are you sure Mr. Tyler won’t be upset about the carpet cleaner being left in somebody’s office?”
“He won’t be upset.”
Ted sighed impatiently. His dinner, barely appetizing while warm, was congealing in the paper bag in his hand while they word-waltzed with Byron all around the real issue here—the unwanted presence of his vacuum cleaner in their workspace. He would have to take the bull by the horns—gently.
“Well, Byron,” he said, trying to sound like a mildly disappointed parent, “I’m afraid we’re a little upset. You see, these offices are very small. There just isn’t room to store a carpet cleaner. So would you please take it downstairs and put it away in the closet with the other cleaning supplies?”
Byron looked unhappy. “Mr. Tyler isn’t going to like it,” he warned. “And I won’t get my ten dollars this week.”
Ted shot him a startled look. “Byron, do you mean you get paid to leave the carpet cleaner inside somebody’s office?”
“Sure. Mr. Tyler gives me money for doing it,” he explained patiently. “That’s how come I know he won’t be upset.”
“I think I’d like to have a closer look at this vacuum cleaner,” remarked Joe casually.
While Byron watched, wide-eyed, Joe studied the evidence from every angle, handling it carefully in order not to smear any fingerprints that hadn’t already been obliterated. At last, he turned to Ted and said quietly, “I’ve found three probable sites. Let’s get Surveillance up here to take it apart.”
“Byron,” said Ted with a friendly smile, “what’s Mr. Tyler’s first name? Do you know?”
Byron frowned. “I only call him Mr. Tyler. But there’s a letter on his shirt.”
“Is it a ‘C’ by any chance?” mused Ted with a calculating glance at his partner.
Joe’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “C for Charlie?” he murmured, and shook his head. “I know it’s a small world, but…”
“Do you know Mr. Tyler?” asked Byron.
Ted smiled. “Not as well as we’re going to, Byron.”
An hour later the vacuum cleaner lay in pieces all over the floor, and Detective Winters was removing the third and last voice-activated tape recording device that he had found inside it.
“Ingenious,” he remarked, holding up a tiny triggering mechanism in a pair of tweezers. “He couldn’t get into the computerized filing system, so he simply recorded various investigators discussing the contents of their case files.”
“Can I go home now?” pleaded Byron wearily.
“Sure, Byron,” said Ted. “We’ll just go down to the maintenance office with you to explain to your boss why you’re so late finishing up.”
“Gee, that’s nice of you, Sergeant. Thanks.”
“Oh, there you are, Byron,” said the man with W. Tyler on his shirt pocket, glancing up from the inventory book. “I was expecting you to clock out almost an—”
“Hello, Tyler,” said Ted, filling up the doorway to the maintenance office and wearing his sternest, stoniest expression. “You’re under arrest for illegal use of electronic monitoring devices and possession and sale of illegally obtained information. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right—”
In a fit of disgust, Tyler threw his stubby pencil down on the desk and watched it bounce away and clatter on the floor.
It took an hour to get through the paperwork involved in booking Walter Tyler, during which time he confessed to selling confidential police information to a street shark named Charlie. Detectives immediately went out looking for him. By then, Joe’s and Ted’s dinners had expired of natural causes, so they took Ted’s notes with them to the nearest Submarine Heaven to discuss while eating in the car.
“Have you checked out the content of these classified ads?” asked Joe between sips of cola.
“Not yet. Maybe you could do that tomorrow morning while I’m talking to the security people at the hospital.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“And then I want to get in touch with Edgecliffe College.”
“Ah, yes, Dr. Liszt,” said Joe, reaching for the appropriate page in the file folder. “I’m afraid you’ll be wasting your time, partner. There was a fire in the good shrink’s office shortly after she was killed, and all her notes and records were lost. Burned to ashes.”
Ted regarded him curiously. “How did you know she was a psychiatrist? I didn’t say she was in my notes.”
“I was in Chicago sixteen years ago when she was murdered. The way she died was so shocking it made the front pages of all the newspapers. The police suspected foul play by one of her patients, but before they could launch a proper investigation, a fire broke out in her office and destroyed all the evidence.” Joe shook his head. “Man, talk about frustration! That was when I decided to become a police officer. We moved to Toronto a couple of months later and I joined the Department.”
“Interesting, isn’t it,” said Ted thoughtfully, “how Liszt dies and then her records are destroyed, and Bert dies and his file disappears…and Alessandra found five cases where it’s possible Mr. Vanish disguised himself as the victim in order to confuse investigators about the time of death. Maybe there’s a pattern to the way he works, after all.”
“Maybe,” Joe said, then sighed. He didn’t look convinced at all.
Chapter Twelve
Monday, June 18
The IV needle came out in time for breakfast. That was what the nurse’s aide who had brought in the tray called it, anyway. As far as Sandy was concerned, plain tea, cream of wheat, and red jelly barely qualified as food.
According to the nurse, she was now on a standard post-operative diet—liquids for one day, semi-solids for one day, and finally solid food. According to Sandy’s roommate, who was being discharged that morning, the only interesting thing about the standard diet was that you never got the same color jelly two meals in a row.
“Good morning, Ms. DiGianni.”
Sandy glanced up and smiled warmly, all thoughts of food forgotten as Ted Gaine pulled the visitor’s chair close to her bed. Then she saw the concerned expression on his face.
“Is something wrong, Sergeant?”
He sighed and sat on the bed, reaching out to grasp her hand.
“The job isn’t done yet, Alessandra,” he said grimly. “We aren’t going to have the support and manpower of the Police Department this time—not initially, anyway, but I’m working on it.” He rubbed her fingers wearily between his own.
Sandy swallowed hard. She liked the feel of her hand in his large warm ones, but it worried her to see him looking so discouraged. “What’s going on?” she asked uncertainly.
“Okay, here’s the situation. Obviously, you’re safe from Dooley now; and we’ve arrested the guy who broke into your apartment, so he won’t be bothering you anymore.”
She eyed him uneasily. “But we still don’t have Mr. Vanish?”
Gaine shook his head. “Not yet. My superiors have decided to go on the assumption that Vanish was never involved, that Dooley simply gave you that name so he would have someone else to blame for Vito’s murder. I wanted to put undercover detectives on this floor, but Inspector Nielsen wouldn’t go for it. So that means it’s just you and me and Joe Wegner
and Sergeant Michaels, who’s posted to the door of Dooley’s room at the end of the hall.”
Sandy’s eyes widened. “Dooley is just down the hall?”
“It’s all right, Alessandra—he’s comatose, and even if he weren’t, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. And Michaels knows where you are, and he’s agreed to patrol the floor periodically. Whenever we’re off duty, Joe and I will be here at the hospital. I’m going to see if we can work with the hospital’s own security people on this.” He paused to dig a business card out of his wallet. “Meanwhile, you’ll have to keep your eyes and ears peeled for anything unusual, anything that doesn’t feel right. If you notice anything at all,” he continued, handing her the card, “call me or Sergeant Wegner immediately at headquarters. If we’re not there, give a message to whoever is—it’ll be relayed at once. If it’s an emergency, call Hospital Security and ask for Peter Haydn. Have you got all that?”
Sandy gazed at him with stricken eyes. A week ago, Gaine’s words would only have worried her, for she’d had her health then, and with it the illusion of being able to take care of herself. Now that she was weak and in pain, with one arm in a cast, all her illusions were gone, and Sandy realized that she was terrified.
Sobbing in a breath, she reached out toward him. “Stay close to me, please?”
At once he was bending over her, his arms around her shoulders, his cheek pressed against her hair. “I’m here, Alessandra,” he murmured, “I’m right here. Everything will be all right.”
“If anything happens to me, the printout is tucked inside the ceiling of my bedroom closet,” she blurted. “And if he finds it before you do—”
Suddenly Gaine’s lips captured hers, stopping her words and kindling a slow, familiar fire deep inside her. It flowed like lava through her body, burning away her bones, leaving only the hungering of her skin and the quickening of her heart and the urgent certainty that if this man with the velvet voice didn’t want and need her as much as she did him, she would surely die…
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