Midnight Redeemer

by Nancy Gideon

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  ImaJinn Books

  www.imajinnbooks.com

  Copyright ©2000 by Nancy Gideon

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  Chapter One

  What was there to live for?

  She leaned over the rail, letting the cold bay breeze scour the tears from her cheeks. She'd cried enough of them over the past few days. Useless, self-deluding tears. Now it was time to take action, to strike back at the man who had broken her heart with his careless and, she had just discovered, meaningless promises.

  She'd show him.

  She'd make him sorry.

  On an evening as depressing as her mood—gray, bleak and endlessly uninviting—she had the pier to herself. An increase in the wind swept away the fog and drizzle, leaving a night as cold and unsentimental as her lover's heart. The clarity of sight made carrying out her plan more difficult. The Sound's angry, early-spring surf seethed about the pilings below, nearly frightening her from her resolve as she dashed the moisture from her eyes. So far down. She silently cursed the nearly full moon for illuminating the restless waters, just as she'd cursed the confrontation that woke her to her true situation.

  She could come back...

  A jagged laugh spilled out. Oh, sure. Come back later when the conditions are more favorable for suicide. She hiccuped, on the edge of hysteria. It had taken her all afternoon in a smoky bar to find the courage to come this far.

  She couldn't back down now. Such cowardice would make her deserving of her former lover's scorn even within her own broken heart. There was no going back.

  To fortify herself, she recalled words that brought her to this fateful brink of self-destruction.

  I never had any intention of leaving my wife. Where would you get such an idea? What we had was ... recreation. Vacation's over. Time to get back to the real world, and that's my family. I never meant to hurt or mislead you...

  So much for good intentions. Sobs threatened to overwhelm her again.

  Fool, fool, fool.

  She stretched out her arms and opened cramped fingers, releasing a spill of crumpled cash. Hush money. An indifferent wind snatched it from her palms. She watched with a sense of woeful satisfaction as the small fortune whirled crazily on the air currents, spiraling to the water below, in a path she would follow soon. How much had her hopes, her dreams—her love—been worth? She'd never counted, but they couldn't be silenced by a finite stack of guilty payoff stuffed into her purse as he'd hurried her out the door and out of his life.

  She didn't want his cash. She wanted him to ache inside with remorse. She wanted him to weep when he heard the news. She wanted him to regret, as she did, the lack of integrity that had him hiding a wife and three kids from her until her emotions were too deeply ensnared to separate decency from desire.

  She didn't want it to be easy for him to forget her.

  She slipped one leg over the rail, then the other, struggling for a toehold on slick cement. She hadn't counted on the pull of wind being so strong. Instinctively, she clung to the rail to keep from being plucked off the narrow ledge. Then she laughed, the sound disappearing into the thinning mists. Wasn't that the idea?

  Contrarily, she couldn't get her hands to let go.

  What the hell was she doing?

  Sanity slipped briefly through the haze of whiskey sours and self-pity.

  Was she ready to die for that weasely bastard who had lied to her then cheerfully went on about his suburban life? Sobs and indecision shook through her.

  But what did she have to go back to? She'd boasted of her impending marriage. She'd introduced her lover to her family, to her friends. By now, everyone knew of her humiliation. Working in the same office complex, she would be forced to see him every single day as he left the building on his way home to his unsuspecting wife and kiddies. Many had known all along that he was married and only out for some ‘recreation,’ but not a one of them had said a word when a word would have saved her from damnation.

  How they must have laughed in the coffee room over her naivete. She choked on her mortification. Had he laughed the hardest and the loudest? No more. No more laughter at her expense.

  The last laugh would be hers.

  On the seat of her car she'd left a note—a wonderfully descriptive note of farewell.

  Let him share the shame burning inside her. Let him squirm with the inconvenience of answering their questions when the police came to his nice suburban front door. Let him explain his involvement to his family, his friends. Let him endure their looks, their suspicions, their blame.

  Let him try to go to sleep every night with her blood on his hands.

  Let the conscience he didn't know he had writhe with the knowledge that he had killed her.

  What a sweet revenge.

  She freed one hand while closing her eyes and breathing deep to release her fears. Just then, a strong gust swept along the pier, hitting her like a propelling shove to the chest. Her feet slipped. First one arm, then both pinwheeled wildly. And she was falling.

  No ... !

  Help me!

  I don't want to die—

  Suddenly, she found herself carried up from the salty spray of the Sound just as it reached to embrace her. Her arms, though shaking with shock, wound about her rescuer's neck as he stole her from the promise of a cold, unforgiving grave. Her nails dug deep into solid flesh.

  It wasn't a dream.

  How ... ?

  How had she been snatched up just shy of the last few feet in her twenty foot plunge? Her drink-soaked mind was too cloudy to grasp at the impossibility. Did it matter now that her wobbly legs were safely planted on the proper side of the rail once again?

  She was alive!

  "Life is too precious to waste, little one. A moment of folly leads to an eternity of regret. No fleeting pain is worth that endless agony."

  Had those gently chiding words been spoken aloud or only within her mind?

  Confused and frightened, she looked up and was lost within a gaze of starlike brilliance. The light pulled her in until nothing else existed except a sense of amazing awe and serenity. All her anguish fell away as unimportant. Her tears dried, forgotten, upon her uplifted face.

  "It was a mistake,” she murmured softly, needing to assure him that her impulsive act was not to be repeated. Pleasing him filled her with vital purpose, and the thought of his disappointment led to unbearable despair.

  "I'm sure it was."

  His eyes dazzled, drawing her deeper into what could only be a dream. But what a wonderful, all-absorbing fantasy.

  "You will not remember whatever misery brought you to this low point. Nor will you recall coming here to do the unthinkable. You will awake in the morning a new being, filled with hope and happiness."

  "Yes,” she whispered as her hands moved, independent of her command, to unwind her scarf and open the top buttons of her blouse. A soft smile shaped her lips as she tipped her head back, offering her bared throat as payment for her future. Her lashes fluttered at the brief sting that followed, but a sense of euphoria quickly overwhelmed any pain of body or spirit. She drifted on a pleasant tide that all too soon left her alone upon the shore of her uncertain tomorrows. But she wasn't afraid. Not any more. Her hands clutched at his coat.

  "Will I see you again?"

  She felt rather than saw his smile. “You no longer need me."


  And he was gone.

  Glancing about the wind-washed pier, she wondered why she had come to such a desolate place on such a wretched night. If she wasn't careful, she could catch her death in the clammy mists of near midnight. She remembered leaving her car and walking but nothing more. How silly...

  Trying to shake the fogginess from her brain, she started to turn.

  Strong hands gripped her waist.

  Before she could utter a startled cry, she was over the rail, plummeting like an extinguished star across the heavens, into the choppy surf below. She never heard the mocking tones of her attacker.

  "Really, my dear, you should never commit without following through. It shows weakness of character."

  Squinting against the harsh antiseptic light, Stacy Kimball pushed her way through double doors marked “No Exit” into “Pill Hill” hospital's basement morgue on First Hill.

  "This better be good, Charlie. I left the VCR and my date on pause."

  "Good to see you, too, Stace,” replied Charlie Sisson. “Wouldn't have interrupted your intimate evening plans with your latest in a long line of barely legal boy-toys, but this one had your name all over it. Take a look and ask yourself, ‘Who loves ya, baby?’”

  Her irritation was forgotten along with the last name of her distraction-of-the-moment. She'd abandoned him at his apartment with scarcely a word, and now she banished him just as easily from memory.

  "What do you have?"

  She'd spent almost a year working next to Charlie, listening to his ribald jokes and learning how to develop the rhinoceros hide necessary to do the job no matter what mess came in each night. He was nearly as thin as one of the corner skeletons he enjoyed dressing in honor of the seasons, the way suburban housewives garbed their cement porch geese. His sense of humor was often more stomach turning than the work they did, but that seemed to make the latter easier to handle. Not surprisingly, he was twice divorced, a man of bad taste and worse luck, a lonely soul who lived for the night shift. In that, they were alike. Perhaps that's why they'd developed their odd bond of kinship that remained even after they went their separate ways.

  He was fond of saying that he was always dead serious when it came to his profession. Despite the bad pun, she found that to be true. So when he called, she came without question.

  What goodies had he found for her this time?

  Curiosity piqued, Stacy approached the drawer he pulled out from the floor-to-ceiling bank of stainless steel vaults. She leaned in close as Charlie placed his half-eaten tuna sandwich atop the covering sheet in order to peel the drape back from the top. Stacy examined the gray and bloated features of what once had been an attractive blonde woman and gave a sound of dismay.

  "What a smell!” She glanced at the offending sandwich. “How can you eat that?"

  "Such is the lonely state of my life. You want a bite?"

  "Ugh. No thank you.” She took the Latex gloves he extended, blew into the cuffs to inflate them slightly so she could slip her hands inside without sticking. “You pulled me away from Bruce Willis to look at a jumper?"

  Charlie's smug and secretive smile was the only reason she didn't turn and walk righteously away. “Not a simple jumper. That's what I thought at first. Especially when they found a ‘good-bye cruel world’ lover's lament in her abandoned car.

  But that was before I saw the marks on her throat."

  "Marks?” Intrigued, Stacy leaned in again.

  "Yeah, right there at the jugular. Not self-inflicted and not from the fall. I'd guess it was some kind of bite right before she bit the big one."

  Stacy glanced up. “The cause of death?"

  "No. That was definitely the 50-degree water I drew out of her. She drowned."

  "So?” she asked him, straightening and peeling off the gloves. “What does the one have to do with the other?"

  "It just changes my conclusions from suicide to murder. She was attacked before she went over. There were the marks on her neck, and I found traces of blood under her nails. She didn't go of her own free will."

  Stacy sighed. “Okay, this is all very interesting, but—"

  "What makes it better than Bruce Willis?” He grinned at her, letting the suspense build.

  "Come on, Charlie, spill it. You can be such a pain in the butt, which is why we don't go out any more."

  "We don't go out any more because I'm not a steroid-popping teenager who goes all night like the Energizer bunny."

  She made a kissy noise. “You never were, doll. You were saying...?"

  Charlie Sisson restored the sheet, covering the young woman's unseeing eyes that had trapped the image of her killer within them, then he gestured toward a tabletop crowded with lab equipment. “It's not the girl, it's the sample I took."

  "The blood sample?” Now, Stacy was all ears. “Show me."

  "Take a gander, and tell me that's not the freakiest thing you've ever seen."

  She bent to peer through the microscope eye piece, studying the smear he'd made. After blinking and rubbing at her eyes in disbelief, she looked again, adjusting the focus and light, then finally just staring in amazement.

  "Didn't I tell you?” her former partner crowed. “Is that going to get me a yes answer when I ask you out again?"

  "Charlie, who else knows about this?"

  Alerted by the sudden hush of her tone, he was all serious business. “No one, Stace. You were the first one I called in. There's more."

  "Tell me."

  "Our chart for the lady's blood type is B+. But that's not what the current test shows. There's been a change in her typing. Those same strange cell patterns that are under the nails are in her own blood chemistry.” He waited for Stacy's reaction. When there wasn't one, he prompted, “Is it something important?"

  "It's something, all right,” she whispered. “This is between you and me for right now, okay? Until I can run some more sophisticated tests.” It was all she could do to lift away from the fascinating slide. She'd never felt such a fire of excitement and intensity.

  "Well, I haven't finished a complete autopsy yet. They'll ask for one once they get the word she's not a simple splasher. I can keep it under my hat until then."

  "You are a stud, Charlie."

  He grinned. Picking up his sandwich, he took a bite and mused thoughtfully, “So tell me, what do you think we've got? A Nobel Prize?"

  He was kidding. He didn't realize.

  Her hands shaking, her insides quaking in seismic tremors of anticipation, Stacy smiled with a fierce, ambitious pleasure. “If what I think proves to be true, what we've got here is the secret of life."

  He stopped mid-chew to give her a blank stare.

  "Charlie,” she explained breathlessly, “I think we're about to unlock the door to immortality."

  He laughed nervously. “Right."

  "More than right. Righteous. No one, Charlie, no one sees this slide.” Her mind whirling like a centrifuge trying to separate the data, she tried to slow down her galloping thought process to grasp the next logical step. “Who is she?"

  "The jumper?” He checked his chart. “Wanda Cummings. It wasn't a robbery. She had her ID, credit cards and about thirty in cash on her when they fished her out this morning. It wasn't the married boyfriend. He was chaperoning his eight-year-old son's birthday party.” He made a disgruntled face. Though a double divorcé, he had strong opinions about the sanctity of wedlock. Unfortunately, his two wives hadn't shared those opinions.

  "Anything special about her?"

  "Other than the fact that she's dead?"

  "Why is she dead? Does it have something to do with where she worked, who she knew, the place it happened—what?"

  "That's what the police are asking. It's what they get paid to do. Rhetorical questions aren't in my job description. I deal with the plain and simple."

  "Okay, here's plain and simple: Where was she found?"

  Realizing how far in over his head he was getting, Charlie began to hedge. “I don't know, Stace. T
his is an ongoing investigation—"

  "Cut the crap, Charlie. I can get the same info from Burke in Homicide. Would you rather I go out with him?"

  That took care of his career-minded scruples. He handed her a slightly soiled sheet of paper, a copy of a copy of the police report that had come in pinned to the young woman's body bag.

  "You didn't get that from me."

  The warning wasn't necessary. Stacy had already forgotten about him as her gaze swept over the significant details that told her maddeningly little.

  "This tells me exactly jack.” Still, she folded it carefully and slipped it into the huge, ugly shoulder bag she carried as if she were a hobo with a train to catch. “I need something more to go on, Charlie. Whose blood is under her nails? I need that someone."

  Charlie glanced about uneasily as if he feared one of his overnight guests might be eavesdropping. “I probably shouldn't say anything, but one of the cops that brought her down, some kid who doesn't know enough to keep his mouth shut, he told me our Ms. Cummings isn't the first they've seen with those odd marks on her neck."

  "And?"

  "And that's more than I should tell you."

  "Except the kid's name."

  When she saw his conscience bob annoyingly to the surface once more, she moved quickly to push it under again. Scruples were for the unambitious.

  Charlie had taught her that, too, so he had only himself to blame.

  "I've got tickets to see Payton and the SuperSonics next Friday. Any idea on who I could give them to?"

  "Friday's good for me. Ken Fitzhugh, fresh-faced, right out of the Academy.” He scowled sourly. “Just your type. Those tickets have my name on them."

  "And this case has got my name on it. No one else's, Charlie. Right?"

  "Right."

  She unclipped the slide, and after protecting the evidence, it, too, found its way into her purse. “Could you get me samples from around that neck wound and of the victim's blood?"

  Charlie threw up his hands. “Sure. Hell, they can only fire me once, right?"

  Stacy grinned. “Right. Who loves ya?"

  "You'd better,” he grumbled. After passing over the samples, he made a shooing gesture. “Now, get outta here and make mischief elsewhere, so I can do my job."