by Linda Ladd
“If you’re good and behave yourself, maybe I’ll sleep in the chair beside your bed again.”
“Oh, you will do that, trust me.”
“You sound very close to lascivious. Look at you, you’re practically drooling.”
“I’m lascivious and drooling both, believe me. You’ve been pushing me away for days now. I’m dying. I really am.”
Claire got serious, and he kissed any remaining hopes away. “No, you’re not dying. And I am so glad about that. If that bullet had been a few inches lower, you would be dead right now.”
“You’re the one who’s in danger. Stay here with me so you’ll be safe.”
“I am here.”
“I mean all the time.”
“There’s a killer out there. He’s struck twice, almost got you, and he’ll strike again.”
“The rest of us are just means to his end. You are the end, Claire.”
“Sit down, Black, take it easy. Getting all riled up is not going to help you get well. I shouldn’t’ve told you that I remembered. I was trying to cheer you up.”
“I am cheered up. Just frustrated as hell. And you’re not listening to me. You’re too stubborn for your own good.”
“Okay, I can’t say I like what you just said, but since you have that big bullet hole through your shoulder, I’m gonna let it ride. Let’s just get down to brass tacks here. Fill me in on this guy, Thomas Landers. Prepare me for what he might do. Give me his M.O.”
Sighing, Black gave up. “His M.O. is crazy, murderous, vile, inhuman behavior, all the time, every time.”
Claire looked angry, too. He couldn’t blame her, and maybe it was the best thing that could happen to her. “I don’t like the sound of that, okay, but I don’t like the sound of anything since I woke up from that damn coma. Everything I’ve seen since I came back is all about life and death and blood and gore.” She paused, took a deep breath, and tried to calm herself. “I don’t like hearing about some psycho hatchet murderer who’s coming after me, but I have to. Truth, Black? Hell, I’d much rather snuggle up with you in your big bed with all those black silk sheets you’ve got in there, just the way you want me to. But that can’t happen right now, and so be it. So get it out of your mind, and hit me with the worst you’ve got and let’s get it over with.”
Black stared up at Claire. She was right, of course. Sex should be the last thing on his mind right now. She was ready to face her demons, and thank God for it. He was finally getting through to her. “Sit down, Claire. You’re going to need to. Believe me when I say this. I do not want to go into all this with you. I dread it, too, but we have to. You have to know what he’s capable of.”
Claire appeared relieved. “I’m ready. I know it’s going to be bad. I’ve been preparing myself ever since you got shot.”
“You’ll never be prepared for this kind of stuff.”
“Just tell me, already. You’re making it worse.”
Black sat down and picked up a thick file lying on the couch. “I’m not going to tell you everything right now. I’m going to show you the rest of the crime scene photos and I’m going to tell you some more details. I want you to look at every picture I’ve got of this guy and memorize them. But I still think you need to let your mind tell you what you’re ready for. Your subconscious is letting some things get through now, so maybe it’s going to happen. But maybe not. We’ll see what else gets triggered.”
Claire didn’t say a word, just listened. But her expression was steely and determined.
“All right,” Black said, dreading this more than she did. “Here’s another picture of him. This is the last one taken of Thomas Landers when he was in the mental hospital. He’s been locked up there for several years. He broke out just before your accident.”
Claire took the photograph he handed over and looked down at it. “He doesn’t look like a monster.”
“Psychopaths usually don’t.”
She was right. The man in the picture looked young. He had tan-colored hair cropped very short and large, innocent-looking blue eyes. And he was a murderous maniac.
Claire said, “You know, he does look familiar somehow. He could be Jesse, I think. Maybe. With different hair and eye color and Jesse looks bigger.”
Black alerted to the name. “Who’s Jesse?”
“Monica’s boyfriend. Remember I told you that on the phone when you called me at Jeepers. He used to walk Jules sometimes. He’s number one on our suspect list for Monica Wheeler’s murder. I picked up his employment records downstairs earlier. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Oh, my God, this guy works here?”
Brows knitted, Claire examined the picture. “Not anymore. He quit by phone the day Monica died. Nobody’s heard from him since. I checked. Do you have more pictures of Landers?”
Black thumbed through the file. “He lived his life as a woman for a while. Right here under our noses. Fooled us, too.”
The photo he handed Claire was of Thomas when he impersonated a pretty young blonde, a friend of Claire’s. He watched, but she showed no visible signs of a quick or visceral reaction. No sign whatsoever that she’d ever known the woman. She said, “Are you serious? He’s a cross-dresser, too?”
“He does whatever he needs to do to get what he wants. He’s quite ingenious sometimes.”
“And this guy wants me, and only me?”
“He was trying to get away with you when he drove you off that bridge. What more proof do you need?”
Claire stood up and started to pace. “C’mon, Black, stop with all this piecemeal crap. Give me that file and let me read it cover to cover. I’m ready. I need to know everything that’s happened concerning him. Give me a break here. If I’m in so much danger, tell me what I need to know.”
Black wasn’t convinced. But he knew he had to tell her the truth. This was her decision. “I’m afraid you can’t handle it. Nobody could handle all the things you’ve been through.”
“I handled it before, didn’t I?”
“You did, but it took you a long time to come to terms with it. And you still have nightmares. If you never remember the details, you’ll probably have a helluva better life.”
“Just give me the damn file. I’ll read a little at a time. If some of it brings my memory back, so be it. If it makes my nightmares worse, so be it. That’s what we want, isn’t it? If a picture of him didn’t bring him back, this probably won’t, either.”
Still, Black hesitated, gripping the file in his hand, but then he handed it over. Tensed and wary, he watched her, afraid of what would come next.
“I’m going to take this back to the bedroom and read it alone. I’ll call you if I need you, so go to bed and rest.”
Black watched her go, and then laid his head back on the cushion and waited. He wasn’t going anywhere. Now that she held it in her hands, it seemed to him like it was a sleeping snake, one that he didn’t want her to wake up.
Jesse’s Girl
Right now
It wasn’t hard to figure out where Joe and his little girl lived. Their names were written in big red letters on their old-fashioned white mailbox: JOE AND LIZZIE MCKAY. They lived in the nearby city of Springfield on an oak-lined street with lots of beautifully restored old Victorian homes. Their house was built on a corner lot, and it looked like Joe was remodeling it himself. A fancy sign in the front yard said FUTURE HOME OF MCKAY HOUSE—SPRINGFIELD’S FINEST BED AND BREAKFAST. Jesse parked around the corner near an empty home, in a position where he could watch them without being seen.
After that, he followed them everywhere they went. When they decided to have dinner in a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant not far off Glenstone Avenue, Jesse went inside, too, and watched the man and his daughter eat pepperoni pizza. He watched the other children, too, looking for a little boy who resembled Annie’s dead son. He remembered little Zachary very well. He had seen the child only hours before he died. He was a cute little thing with white-blond hair and big blue eyes like his mama’s. Too bad
he wasn’t around to kidnap. Then Annie would really want to be in Jesse’s family.
After Chuck E. Cheese, they went to the Cost Cutter grocery store and then to Walmart, and he followed them, being very careful to keep out of sight. He found right off that Joe McKay maintained a very close tab on his kid, always putting her in his shopping cart or holding her hand or keeping her close. And the dad was big and strong and tough and could definitely best Jesse in any kind of physical fight. But all parents have a moment now and then when they glance the other way or are distracted by somebody or something. The time would come when he could snatch the tiny little girl and get her home with him where she belonged.
After Joe McKay returned home, he put his child to bed. Jesse could see which room it was because the curtains were open, and he could see a Disney princess poster hanging on a pink wall. It was the one from Beauty and the Beast, he thought. What was her name? Ariel, maybe? No, her name was Belle. Jesse would have to go back to Walmart and buy some princess toys for Lizzie to play with at his house.
That night he slept in his car, but it didn’t do him any good. The next morning, McKay was always near little Lizzie, watching her like a hawk. Why was he so diligent? Most daddies forgot to watch their children, a lot more so than their mommies. After another day spent sitting in his car in the hot summer heat, he decided to come back some other day. He had time before he was ready to snatch the child. And he missed Annie. She was either at Cedar Bend or working with her partner or out trying to find Jesse. He smiled. She would find him, all right, as soon as he had everything in place once more. It wouldn’t be long now, thank God. He had been without her far too long—years, in fact. He couldn’t wait much longer.
On the way home, he thought about Annie, and Lizzie, and Miss Rosie. Miss Rosie was lonely on her plate, and she often wept and complained bitterly that she wanted someone to talk to. But she didn’t have to wait long. The time was almost at hand. Now that Black was hurt and out of commission, Annie would be easier to get to, and until Black’s alibis were verified, he still had the murder rap hanging over his head. The cops at the lake weren’t too bright, anyway. They’d proved that lots of times.
Happy now, content, he drove back to the lake and parked in the busy Cedar Bend parking lot, where he had a good view of the door Annie used to go up to her lover’s penthouse apartment.
Chapter Twenty-four
As it turned out and after shivering through the first ten pages of Black’s thick Claire-Morgan-and-her-bogeyman file, Claire decided not to dig too deep into her sordid past, not just yet. Maybe he was right. Maybe she didn’t need to know every single detail of what she’d been through. Maybe the gruesome photos would do the trick. So she studied all of them in detail. Or, and despite her bravado, maybe she was pretty much afraid to see what had been done to her. Yep, that sounded more on target.
Desperately, she tried to determine exactly why the picture of Thomas Landers reminded her of Jesse. The two men didn’t look exactly identical, but they were similar, especially in the way their faces were shaped. She needed a full body shot of the two, which would make it easier to judge. If Landers was that good at changing his persona, she bet she wouldn’t know him even if she had seen him up close and personal. But she was looking for him, nonetheless, and Jesse, too, and wouldn’t stop until she found them. She had a couple of bones to pick with one or both of them—shooting Black, first and foremost. The shooter was not going to get away with that, no way in hell.
As far as Black was concerned, and despite his suggestive and seductive talk earlier that evening, he was a mite more under the weather than he admitted and eventually had to give himself a pain shot. That should also put him to sleep, which both relieved and disappointed her. Go figure. She was beginning to remember their relationship, all right, more all the time. Long-past times where they were only talking or walking or laughing, normal couple-in-love things in quick, quick glimpses, but lots of the bedroom parts, too. Still not enough, however, to blithely jump into bed with him as if nothing had happened. Or maybe she would really soon, and gladly so. Was she conflicted, or what?
So she kissed him good night after he had pretty much gone off to that induced-slumber/drugged-out twilight zone and wouldn’t try to grab her. Then she sat vigil beside his bed while she held the open file on her lap and felt fear rolling up and down the back of her neck at the mere thought of jabbing a fork in old open wounds she didn’t really want to remember. She finally retired to Black’s big bed down the hall and slept on his pillow, which smelled enticingly of his expensive yet über-masculine cologne.
Black was wearing her down big-time, but then, who was she kidding? She was falling for him all over again. It wouldn’t surprise her, nope. What was there not to like? Black was hot as hot could possibly be, rich, famous, paid her a lot of very special attention, and told her he loved her often and well. Jeez, the longing in those blue eyes of his was enough to make her want to throw in the towel.
Claire was up well before Black awoke the next morning and had showered, dressed in a clean white polo shirt with the Canton County Sheriff’s Office logo on the pocket, and jeans, and a new pair of black Nike running shoes that Black had bought for her after she awakened from the coma. In fact, he had ordered them hand delivered with lots of other clothes that she liked and that fit her. See, what’s not to like? This guy has it all down in spades.
Black was fast asleep when she went into his makeshift hospital room. He looked even better today than yesterday, thankfully not the white as snow, Edward-the-Handsome-Vampire mask anymore, very peaceful and resting comfortably. RN Violet was back on duty and tiptoeing around soundlessly doing her thing, efficiently, too. Just as Monica had done. She tried not to think of how Monica Wheeler had looked the last time she’d seen her. She left Black in the woman’s capable hands and met Bud outside the elevator doors where Isaac, the tough-looking-but-Pooh-Bear-the-rest-of-the-time gatekeeper still stood vigil.
“Okay, where to first?” she said to Bud as she climbed aboard his Bronco, poking on her sunglasses and turning the air conditioner vent straight into her face. Ninety-five degrees will do that to a southern California expatriate.
“Straight over to Springfield to check out Long’s previous real estate office and co-workers. Thank God, I’m ready to get outta here for a while.”
“Okay.”
“How’s Nick?”
“He’s curled up like a baby and won’t get agitated until he wakes up and finds I’m still a police officer.”
With a broad grin, Bud glanced over at her. “He’s protective of you, all right. You sayin’ he wants you to hang it up?”
That idea had not occurred to her. As if Black, or anyone else, would have a say on how she pursued her career. “It’s not his decision.”
“It used to be.”
Claire turned and gave him one surprised look. “You saying he tells me what to do?”
Bud guffawed at that one. “Nobody tells you what to do, Claire. Believe me. But if anybody tried to take you away from all this crap, it’d be him. He’s almost as obsessed with you as Landers. But in a good way. Surely, you’ve noticed.”
She had, of course, but she didn’t think he would ever demand that she quit the force, at least she hoped not. She changed the subject. “Any results on the DNA found at my place?”
“Not yet, but it shouldn’t be long now. Charlie’s expediting the test results any time now.”
“Let’s just catch this guy and wrap this thing up. What’d you say, Bud? It’s getting a little too hairy for me to deal with.”
“I say amen to that.” Bud slowed and stopped at a traffic light on a busy intersection. He blew out some air, then looked over at her. “I missed you, you know. And I’m glad you’re back. You act more like the Claire I know every day.”
For some reason, his earnestness touched her. “Thanks. I’m recalling things right and left lately. Now if I can just put everything together. Do I act a lot differently t
han before? Noticeably, I mean?”
“Oh, yeah, you’re usually ten times more annoying and hardheaded than this. Not that you’re not now, too.”
Claire slapped at his arm. “You love me, and you know it.”
“You’re pretty hard-nosed and bossy, but you’re right, I’m lucky to have you as a partner.”
She glanced over at him and found that he looked embarrassed, too. Oh, yeah, Bud was an okay dude.
Miriam Long’s previous real estate company was a ReMax affiliate. It was located on Campbell Street, and turned out to be a small and nondescript storefront establishment in a small and nondescript strip mall. When they went inside, a small and nondescript but rotund man, Humpty Dumptyish, in fact, shot quickly out of the back office, as if he’d never seen a client before and was highly excitable. He was very short—came to about her chin—and dumpy, kind of egg-shaped, in fact, and totally bald. He also reminded Claire of one of the taller Disney Dwarfs. Doc, maybe, but she didn’t remember the others, so who knows? Maybe Droopy or Sneezy? The guy had a little silver hoop in his pierced left ear, one that had a black-and-white yin yang symbol hanging off it. This didn’t really go all that well with his short-sleeved, red-yellow-and-green plaid, button-down-collar shirt and red tie and insurance agent Dockers. He had a wide smile, though, a real pleasant one, and he used it with thrilling abandon.
“Hello, friends. How can I help you folks?”
After his door-to-door-salesman-on-speed greeting, he reached out his arm and glad-handed first Claire, then Bud with more enthusiasm than she’d experienced in a great long time. She decided he had to be a fiery country preacher on the weekends. Or the aforementioned sales operative, used cars, maybe.
“We’re detectives from Canton County up at the lake,” she said, holding up the badge hanging on the chain around her neck. “I’m Claire Morgan, and this is my partner, Bud Davis.” Bud flashed the badge hooked to his belt with some masculine flair, eyeing the good-looking secretary sitting beside them. The young girl hadn’t gotten a word in edgewise yet, not even hello. Claire had a feeling she was used to it with Friendly Humpty as a boss. She also had a feeling the young girl was finding Bud quite the sexy cop. But, hey, lots of women did. Probably impressed by that big gun of his.