Andrews chuckled as he glanced at his beautiful companion and said, “Has it been that obvious? I always thought we were pals until Rebecca started firing at me.”
She cried, “I started? Listen to the man! He’s been dumping on me since day one.”
Andrews smiled at the lieutenant. “That’s her version.” He winked at the female detective and said to her, “Can’t you admit, now, that I’ve made you a better cop?”
Her eyes snapped as she replied, “Not in any way I’ve noticed. Well—okay, maybe it is true that a bit of criticism tends to whet the ambition but I always thought I was doing fine without it. So don’t pull this ‘devil’s advocate’ stuff with me. I still believe that you just enjoy being nasty.”
“And I’m such a nice guy,” he proclaimed with mock indignation. He got to his feet and announced, “Well, I’ve got a deadline, gotta go.” He smiled at the two police officers and departed without further comment.
Morgan smiled quizzically at Rebecca and said, “He’s an odd one. Good enough reporter, I guess, but he wouldn’t be such a pain in the ass if the guy was on our side once in awhile.”
Rebecca replied, “Well, I saw a new side to Charlie Andrews tonight. Maybe he has just been acting the way he thinks he’s supposed to act.” She gave her boss a self-conscious grimace as she added, “Somehow, he had heard about the Oklahoma connection and he has been trying to confirm it. Actually, I got more from him than he got from me. He knows the suspect.”
The lieutenant gave her a dead-pan scrutiny as he responded to that. “You’re talking about the guy from Oklahoma, Martin?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He once interviewed the felon in prison. Even said he went to bat for him, trying to get him released. Martin took up journalism in prison and worked on the prison newspaper. Andrews characterized him as ‘brilliant’ but ‘twisted.’ I knew that I was not supposed to be discussing the Oklahoma connection with him but he already knew something about it and insisted that he wanted to help us develop the facts so I had to make a ‘judgment call’ on this one. I didn’t see anything to be gained by stonewalling it.”
“No matter anyway, Rebecca. Our city fathers could not leak the information fast enough, well before our press release had even been formulated, so it will be common knowledge before the town sleeps again.” He smiled a bit uncomfortably and seemed to be picking his words carefully as he said, “Word’s all around that you and Pete are splitting up. I hope that’s not true, but if it is, I want to state my own case before Andrews does—if that is what he is into, and I’m sure it is.
What I am saying—or what I am trying to say—is that I want to be in the running if you decide to start looking for another fellow.”
That should not have taken her totally by surprise, but it did. She did not quite know how to respond. She soberly told him, “The very idea is a bit premature, I’m afraid.”
“I know, but you’ll keep it in mind, won’t you?”
She said, “Of course I will, Jack. Thanks. Maybe I needed that. But, dammit, I don’t know what to do with it, either.”
He replied, “Don’t have to do anything with it right now. Just please don’t forget it.”
“I won’t forget it,” she assured him.
But she wished that she had never heard it. She was not shopping for men, dammit. She had a man, all the man she wanted. But it would be nice if he were just a bit more accessible—and a bit less complicated.
The man she “wanted” was at that very moment unhappily involved with another devil of his own making. Storme had been told that his wife had left the P.D. in the company of Charlie Andrews, though he did not have the story straight and had been under the impression that the two had “met” outside and left the premises together. He had always been a very direct sort of guy so would have felt no qualms discussing such a matter with almost anyone except Rebecca. That was different. He had always had a problem confronting his wife on any substantive issue. Maybe he was a bit intimidated by Rebecca—and maybe he just always felt that she would best him in any meaningful controversy outside the workplace.
So it would not have been like him to rush after her in open confrontation. After all, he was the one who abandoned their bed and board; he knew that Rebecca was more or less a “free agent” now and did not have to answer to him regarding her personal life. Still, it smarted—yeah, it smarted like hell and it helped not at all to know that he himself was probably responsible for the present state of their marriage.
Why, he wondered, had he never been able to honestly discuss the feelings he had with the woman he loved? They had been on a collision course from the moment they took up housekeeping together. But he had never really wanted it that way. He supposed that it had something to do with his need to be always in charge and unwilling to recognize her own fine feel for the work; he had always been in competition, dammit, with his own wife! Wasn’t that a hell of a note! She had always been his closest supporter—and he had betrayed that loyalty. So, hell, he had fouled his own nest—and maybe that hurt as much as anything. She would have met him at least half way at any point but apparently he had never been able to reach even that far to keep their marriage intact—had to be his way, all the way, all the time. So he had really blown it. He had known that and he had finally come down off his high horse and gone looking for her, only to find that now she was in a cozy tete-a-tete with Storme’s own boss, Jack Morgan, the guy who had been sniffing around her from the beginning.
It was too much. Something snapped inside him. He sat in his car for several minutes, watching them through the window and working at his control. He could not remember a time during his entire life when he felt so totally out of control of his emotions. Every vile suspicion was working at him, every insane thought. Had Jack been scoring with her all the time while Pete had been so jealously guarding his little swing team empire—the one that Rebecca had been trying to wean him from? Hadn’t she been hoping only for a sane relationship with her husband, and hadn’t Pete himself fought so hard to keep things just the way they were? Wasn’t that the way she would have to see it?—and wouldn’t she have been perfectly justified in concluding that her husband was an insensitive jerk and not worthy of her loyalty? How long would a girl be expected to wait for a guy who cared more for his job than for a warm and intimate relationship with the woman he married?
They had never had that, except in fits and starts. Shit, he had been married to his job!
Well, dammit, enough of that crap.
He unslung his revolver and carefully placed it in the glove compartment then went inside the Coffee Bean. A good cop never leaves his gun behind so maybe he knew that he was not fully in control of himself yet. Obviously his face was revealing the continued tension within him because Lieutenant Morgan showed him a strange smile and hastened to his feet when Storme appeared.
“Sit down,” Morgan stiffly greeted him. “Want some coffee?”
Storme ignored his superior, his eyes angrily fixed on his wife. “Let’s go,” he growled.
Rebecca gave him a startled look, glanced at Morgan, and told her husband, “I’m fine right here. What’s wrong?”
Storme said savagely, “Nothing’s wrong, everything’s beautiful except that my boss is romancing my wife, my marriage is down the tubes, and apparently nobody is unhappy about that except me.”
Morgan said, “Have some coffee, Pete. Christ. Get a hold of yourself.”
The two men were almost toe to toe and Rebecca must have known that her husband was working hard at his self-control. She jumped to her feet and said softly, “Let’s go outside, Pete,” and grabbed her purse.
They would have walked out together but the Lieutenant got between them and blocked Rebecca’s passage. “You’re not going anywhere,” he told her, “until Pete simmers down.” He said harshly to Sergeant Storme, “I mean it!—you’re not going out of here like that.”
A muscle popped in Storm
e’s jaw as he replied, “I’m okay, I really am.”
“Then sit down, dammit.”
The three of them took their seats around the table. A nervous waitress who had overheard the argument and rushed into the breech, suggested over-loudly, “Coffee all around?”
Morgan growled, “Yeah. Unless Sergeant Storme would prefer something different.”
“Coffee’s fine,” Storme said mildly. Obviously he felt a little silly. “Unless you’ve got a hair shirt back there somewhere.”
“Hair what?” the waitress asked.
“Never mind, bad joke. Regular coffee.”
“I never know if you guys are serious, or what,” the waitress announced, obviously delighted that they were all seated amicably as she hurried away.
“Are you serious, or what?” Morgan asked his Sergeant.
Storme grinned and replied, “Hell, I’m always serious—too serious, I guess.” He turned to Rebecca. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make a scene. It’s been a bad week, I guess. That’s no excuse but….”
She said, “No, it’s okay, I understand. It has been hard on all of us. This has been one of those incredibly pressurized weeks. How long ago was your shooting review? Seems like weeks ago.”
Sergeant Storme replied, “No, wasn’t that some time last year?”
Morgan argued, “Oh hell no, had to have been longer than that. We were still friends during that period.”
“We’re still friends,” Storme said, “—at least, as far as I’m concerned.”
“How about me,” Rebecca asked almost winsomely.
Her husband showed her a sober smile as he replied, “Hell, Rebecca, I hope we’re more than that.”
She said, “Of course we are. So what are we, exactly? Are we friends or are we lovers?”
“I would like to think that we are both,” the Sergeant said.
“So why did you walk out on me, asshole?”
He grinned. “You just said it. I am an asshole and I’ve been an ass-hole all my life. But can’t we fix that somehow?”
“Do you really want to fix it?”
“More than anything.”
So the Stormes, it seemed, had rediscovered each other—but that left a rather awkward moment for the Lieutenant.
“Take me home, Peter,” Rebecca said softly.
But a tender moment for the Stormes was not quite yet in the cards.
The Lieutenant’s pager sounded at that very instant and stole the moment.
The Sunrise Killer had struck again—in the dark of the night. The guy was on another rampage, nowhere near Woody Heights. It was a major departure from his previous M.O., but dead is dead and this time two young women occupying the same apartment not two minutes from the Coffee Bean had been brutally attacked and sadistically murdered.
Seven murder victims, in less than a week.
And the end appeared to be nowhere in sight—not for San Remo, not for the Sunrise Killer, and certainly not for Peter and Rebecca Storme.
The case not only intensified but now it had expanded its focus and certainly its impact on the area. By morning, the fear in San Remo would be approaching the flash-point and the entire country would be feeling the shock waves.
San Remo, indeed, had come of age.
Chapter 16
The latest victims were hardly more than school girls, sharing their first adult encounter outside the confines of family life. Both were eighteen, employed, and no doubt savoring the adventure. A brutal killer had brought that to a senseless and terrible end even as the parents of one of the girls were planning a late night visit to assist in the decorating of their new home. The “window of opportunity” for the killer was extremely brief; the parents lived but ten minutes away and had spoken to their daughter just moments before leaving their own home.
The killer had been on the premises when the parents arrived.
They had been standing at the front door and frantically seeking entry while the unmistakable sounds of terror were piercing the thin walls of the brand new building, still only partially occupied. By the time the father was able to break in, it was too late. Both girls had been savagely and repeatedly stabbed to death. The killer had made a hasty escape through a back window.
Rebecca read it as a hurried and perhaps almost panically botched attempted rape in which the murders became automatic when the parents arrived on the scene. This time, there had been no opportunity for the killer to follow his usually painstaking removal of evidence from the murder scene. Bonelli found well preserved latents on a number of surfaces as well as fibers and other telltale clues. Even before returning to the P.D., Bonelli’s evidence showed conclusively that it had been the work of Robert Martin, the Sunrise Killer.
Rebecca was all the more convinced that these were acts of a psychotic personality whose derangement would propel him steadily forward into more heinous behavior until captured. She was working now on a theory that Robert Martin had been somehow suppressing his insane urges since his escape from prison in Oklahoma, though that was admittedly pure guess work on her part—he could have been raping and killing all along and not discovered until now, but her own sensing was that the psychopath had been largely quiescent until something recently set him off again.
Only time would reveal the truth of that.
Meanwhile, the lunatic was still in their midst, and the killing went on. What would stop it? In God’s name, how could they stop it?
He carefully removed his clothing and stepped into the shower to allow the steamy water to erase every vestige of the night’s activities from his body, every hair, every pore—and there was much to be erased. He studied transfixed as the swirling water beneath his feet turned from red to pink and eventually ran clear as the drain swallowed up the final reminder—and he was clean again at last. Not that he would ever be truly clean again, but at least he could take comfort with the illusion. They would never believe that he was blameless in all this, nor would they ever understand the exhilaration that accompanies this particular brand of sheer power and—yes—even of a sort of transcendent superiority—Godliness. Because of him, the world could be clean again, if only for a moment. Not everyone would understand that, but he did and it filled him with an almost reverent sense of awe.
Those stupid kids! He had always known that a woman could never be trusted—now he knew that they get warped very early in life! All he had wanted to do was show them a good time. Stupid—they were stupid!
Sluts, they were all sluts. It’s born into them—it’s genetic, he guessed—all they ever wanted to do was tease and lead you around by your gonads. Those little pussies were just as wild and horny fresh out of their mommy’s womb, they’re born to it. Why not?—could anything pure come from another pussy, after all?
They were all cock crazy. You were supposed to keep it up and ready just anytime they wanted it. Pity the poor guy if he can’t do that.
Christ, Mommy—even you, you rotten bitch, all you ever wanted from me was a ready cock. I never wanted that. I never wanted it, Mommy—you rotten bitch.
You couldn’t even wait for me to grow up, damn you. What does a ten year old boy know about ready cocks? What can he know about whores and wicked women? Mommy, I loved your titties. You knew I loved them. You didn’t have to send me away. It couldn’t have cost that much to keep me. Why did you send me to those other whores?
They beat me Mommy—the same way you used to do when you’d had too much wine. At least you had an excuse for it. They did not. How many of those bitches did you believe I could put up with? In the end, Mommy, they all wanted the same thing you wanted. Didn’t you know that, Mommy? Didn’t you care?
Fuck ’em. Fuck them all.
You would have kept me with you, wouldn’t you, if I had been able to get it up? Why didn’t you give me more time? Why did you laugh at me? I can still hear it—night after night, I still hear it. God’s sake, Mommy, why didn’t you love me the way I loved you? I didn’t want your ass, not even your titties. I
just wanted you to hold me and love me and take care of me, I didn’t need that other stuff.
Bitch! You didn’t need those other men, all those other men in our bed. Did I cramp your style, Mommy? Was that why you kept me locked in the closet when your “boyfriends” came around? Did you know how dark it was in there, how scarey, how cold it could get on that floor—how wet and stinky when I couldn’t even get out to use the bathroom? Why did you hit me when I wet my pants? I couldn’t help it, didn’t you know that?
Marty was a bastard, Mommy. He was really sick, that son-of-a-bitch, totally warped. Why wouldn’t you believe me when I told you he tried to butt-fuck me every time you left the house? Why couldn’t you believe that?—or would it have been to inconvenient for you to believe it? This guy was a fag and you didn’t want to know it.
Well, I’ll say one thing, Mommy—Marty prepared me for my first go at the joint. Did you ever know what happens to young cherries like me in prison? Do you know what it feels like to be slammed against the cold stone wall and violated by some big dude twice your size?
Are you satisfied now, Mommy? Is this what you had in mind for me?
Well I’m not a cherry anymore, bitch—I’ll never be a cherry again.
Nor would any one else, if Robert Martin had anything to say about it.
The terror had not ended in San Remo—nor, for that matter, inside the tortured mind of Robert Martin.
Chapter Seventeen
The eighteen year old victims, Tammy Robertson and Iona Bradford, had been close friends since the age of four when both families moved into the new, slightly upscale neighborhood adjacent to San Remo. The families had lived side by side and the two young girls had jointly participated in various activities common to the area, such as scouting, sports and church functions. They had been inseparable in life; now, it seemed, they would be inseparable in death. The parents of both girls had been holding a stunned vigil in a courtyard outside and had been joined by an ever-increasing numbers of friends and other family members even while the police investigation was grinding through its inexorable routine.
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