Heart of the Night (10 page)

“Then just lie down. Try to relax. It'll be better for Megan that way.” Strung out herself, she wasn't about to argue further. “I'm going to run on home. I'll see you in the morning. Hang in there, okay?” Without awaiting an answer, she saw herself out.

The night was dark and wet. Despite the long wool coat that enveloped her, Savannah was chilled by the time she reached her car. She slid in and locked the door in a single, quick motion, then steadied her hand and put the key in the ignition.

The drive home was quick, thanks to the hour and the sparseness of traffic. She almost wished there were more cars, more noise, more life. The windshield wipers maintained a steady rhythm against the rain; the wet pavement mirrored the city lights. Still, the world seemed very dark, and she felt very much alone.

Parking in the garage behind her townhouse, she hurried across the small open space to her back door. Her hands trembled as she unlocked it and continued to tremble while she turned off the alarm to allow herself entry. With the door closed behind her, she took an unsteady breath and proceeded up the stairs to the first floor of the townhouse.

Hanging her coat in the closet, she carried her briefcase directly into the den and set it on the desk. Then she sank into the old, leather wing chair, dropped her shoes to the floor, and drew her knees to her chest. Hugging them tightly, she took one shallow breath after another. All the while her body trembled.

She didn't cry. She never did when this happened. In place of tears, a fine sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead, her upper lip, the back of her neck. And the trembling went on.

She knew what was happening; it was no great mystery. In the course of a day, she went about her work in a very diligent, very capable and controlled manner. But some days the work she did deeply upset her. On those days, she held back her feelings until she felt she would burst, because the last thing she could do was show weakness at work. Only later, at home, sitting in her chair with the high back and wings to protect her, could she give vent to the emotions that cried for release.

It was a classic case of delayed reaction, and it didn't happen often. She could handle her job perfectly well nine-tenths of the time. The other tenth of the time, she suffered. It had been that way when she tried a case involving a pair of toddlers who had been sexually abused in a nursery school. It had been that way when she headed an investigation into the cult suicides of three teenagers at the local high school. It had been that way with the limbless torso case.

Megan Vandermeer's kidnapping wasn't blatantly grotesque or bloody. Optimally, it would end with the payment of a ransom and Megan's return, with little more physical harm done than a broken French door.

Optimally.

Unfortunately, Savannah knew too much. She knew how the criminal mind worked. Despite the words of encouragement she gave Will, she had seen the results of irrational acts too often to believe that the optimal situation would come to pass. She did believe that Megan would return home alive; she had to believe that. What frightened her was the torment Megan might endure before then, and where that torment was concerned, Savannah's imagination was fertile.

Megan was her friend, and that made the pain she felt so much worse. She wanted to help. She was doing everything she could. But she was getting nowhere. And Megan suffered.

She kept taking soft, shallow breaths. Turning sideways in the chair, she pressed her damp brow to her knees and closed her eyes.

Gradually, the shaking began to ease. Gradually, her breathing deepened. With her eyes still closed, she rested her head back against the chair.

A few minutes later, she went into the bedroom to change her clothes. Despite the fact that she was physically drained, she had work to do. Work was her scourge and her salvation. Will took sleeping pills, Susan drank scotch, Savannah worked.

There were times when she wondered where it would end. But, hell, she had to do something until midnight.

C
HAPTER
5

“It's twelve-oh-four, and this is Jared Snow, comin' to you at the tail end of a cold and rainy Tuesday.”

Savannah had been waiting, focusing with only half a mind on the memorandum she was dictating. At the slow, husky sound of his voice, she turned off her minirecorder and pressed its narrow end to her lips.

“You're listening to cool country,”
he told her with a lazy smile,
“95.3 FM, WCIC Providence. I'll be playing nothing but the smoothest of country sounds till six. If you've just come home, find a comfortable place to dry off and warm up. If you've been home awhile, refill that mug with whatever feeds your senses, take a real slow breath, and relax. I've got Randy Travis, Juice Newton, and Exile comin' up on 95.3 FM, the home of a little country in the city, WCIC Providence, kickin' off a cool country streak with a new cut by T. Graham Brown. Jared Snow listenin' with you in the heart of the night. Enjoy.…”

She did, oh, she did. The tension that lingered in her body seemed to ease with the sound of his voice. The images that plagued her with each break from her work disappeared. In a leisurely motion she set the recorder on the desk. Raising her arms, she linked her hands on her forehead, pushed up the dark bangs that normally lay there and arched her back into a feline stretch.

Jared Snow. He had a sexy voice, and a suggestive way of using it. He was smooth and easy; it was hard to listen to him and not melt. He talked as though he were lying beside her in bed, as though they had just made heated love and were in a comfortable embrace, basking in the afterglow. When he identified his station, he could as well be saying she turned him on, and when he announced the song to come, he could be telling her he wanted her again.

Not for the first time, she wondered what he looked like. He had to look sexy. Not that looks mattered, certainly not when it came to Jared Snow. But she didn't want him to look sleazy. She saw enough of that during an average day in court. She wanted him to be a sight for sore eyes. She wanted the reality of him to be wonderful.

Maybe she wanted too much. Susan told her all the time that her expectations were too great. Maybe they were. Such had been her experience with Matt Briarwood. She had been twenty-one and in love, only to find that he merely wanted a few nights in bed. More recently she had entrusted a political corruption case to Bobby O'Neil and learned a month after the case ended in an acquittal that Bobby had accepted a bribe to back off.

More than once Savannah wondered whether she was simply a poor judge of character. But she didn't want to believe that. She decided that there were times when she felt so strongly about things that she was blind to reality. In Matt's case, she'd been in love, which was enough to warp any young woman's judgment. In Bobby's case, she had seen a brilliant legal mind and had been so eager to put it to use that she had not been on the lookout for snags.

She supposed she was an eternal optimist. Her only alternative was to go through life expecting the worst. That was too depressing.

Dropping her arms, she leaned toward the briefcase that lay open on the desk and removed the pad of paper she used when she had talked with Will earlier. Chewing on her lower lip, she studied the words written there:
KICK IN A COOL THREE MILLION
.

Over and over she read the phrase. Closing her eyes, she pictured the original, recalling the message in its entirety. As a ransom note, it got its point across, but why those words?
Kick in a cool three million. Kick in a cool three million.

Kickin' off a cool country streak …

Kick in a cool three million.

Kickin' back to an oldie …

Kick in a cool three million.

Kickin' in at twelve twenty-two …

Lots of people listened to Jared Snow. He had been holding down the twelve-to-six shift at CIC for two years, during which time he had no doubt built a sizable following. Lots of people listened, people like her who either didn't want to sleep, didn't need to sleep, or couldn't sleep.

Kick in a cool three million.

Kickin' off a cool country streak …

The similarity had to be a coincidence.

Pushing the pad and pencil away, she retrieved the small recorder, rewound it to find her place, then resumed dictation. The music played softly in the background. If Savannah had felt it would carry onto the recorder, she would simply have lowered the volume. She wouldn't have turned it off. Jared Snow was too good to miss.

After finishing that memorandum, she dictated two letters for her secretary to type the next day. In the middle of the second one, Jared spoke to her again.

“That was Gary Morris, harmonizing with Crystal Gayle, and I'm Jared Snow,”
he drawled,
“sittin' with you in the heart of the night. Don't touch that dial. It's set at 95.3 FM, WCIC Providence, all day, every day, your best bet for a little country in the city…”

His voice faded as the music began, but she held its memory inside her far longer.

He was tall and dark, she decided. Rakish, rather than suave. He had the lazy smile she associated with his voice, and more often than not it was crooked. She imagined broad shoulders, a tapering torso, long legs. He wore form-fitting sweaters with nothing underneath, and jeans that fit like a glove, leaving no doubt as to his sex.

With a soft moan of dismay, Savannah snatched up the recorder, and inhaled, ready to speak. The breath silently seeped out. She had no idea where she had left off. Lips tight, she rewound the tape, listened for a minute, then finished the letter. She managed to quickly dictate another one before Jared returned.

“Ronnie Milsap, ‘Where Do the Nights Go.' I spent some time with Ronnie not long ago. Nice guy. Nice song.”

Savannah had been concentrating on her work, so she had not heard the song, but if Jared said it, it had to be so. Threading her fingers into her hair, she began to loosen the pins that had kept it in a neat twist since morning.

“I've got lots more coming up for you from the home of cool country sounds, 95.3 FM, WCIC Providence, starting with one of the sweetest I've heard in a while, a new one from Dolly Parton.…”

Dolly started singing, and Savannah's hands went still in her hair. She disliked Dolly Parton. She wasn't sure why. Dolly sang nicely enough, beautifully, in fact. But she was too short, too blonde, too busty. Jared had called her song one of the sweetest he had heard in a while. Maybe that was what bothered Savannah. Maybe she was jealous.

“For God's sake,” she muttered and removed the hairpins with a vengeance. When they were in a neat pile on the desk, she ran her fingers through her long brown hair to relieve the little kinks that had set in. Then, tossing the mane over her shoulder, she picked up the recorder again. But she was feeling restless, not at all like working. A hot bath and a cup of warm milk sounded nice.

Neither one hit the spot. No sooner had she sunk into the tub than she began to think about Megan. After no more than five minutes in the water, she climbed out, toweled herself dry and, drawing on a soft cotton nightgown, went for the milk. It left an unpleasant taste in her mouth.

So she climbed into bed, set the radio to play for an hour, drew the covers to her chin, and waited for Jared Snow to speak. She didn't have long to wait.

“It's one-twenty,”
he told her in the gently raspy tone that caressed her mind,
“twenty minutes after one in the Ocean State. The WCIC forecast calls for clearing by morning, but I can still hear the rain on my roof. Don't go out if you can help it, it's a raw thirty-nine degrees, a perfect night to curl up with a blanket, a glass of wine, a special someone. I'm Jared Snow. In the heart of the night you're tuned to WCIC, 95.3 FM. Still got more than four hours of the smoothest of country sounds. Stay with me while I kick in a cool cut from Conway Twitty.…”

With the start of the music, Savannah rolled to her side. WCIC. Kick. It was a natural. Jared Snow was not the only disc jockey to link the words. She had heard Joseph Allan Johnson do it. And Melissa Stuart. It was obviously part of the station's logo, like “cool country” and “a little country in the city.”

Kick in a cool three million.

Kick in a cool cut …

Coincidence. That was all.

Still, she wondered. She thought about work, too, as she lay there. Had she properly prepared one of the witnesses for the arson trial? Would the upcoming fund-raiser for Paul be another small stepping stone toward the governor's office. She wondered about turning thirty-one on Saturday and whether she could have a baby at forty-one. Most of all, she thought about Megan.

She planned what she would do the next day, mentally shifting her schedule around to allow time with Will. She even climbed out of bed once to jot down a note of two appointments her secretary could postpone. Then she returned to bed, huddled beneath the covers listening to the rain, and waited for Jared Snow's voice.

The last thing she remembered was his telling her that it was coming up on two-thirty and he was kickin' off another string of six.

*   *   *

The taut and silent faces that met Savannah in the Vandermeer kitchen at eight the next morning told her that there was no news.

Sam joined her for a quiet meeting in the hall. “I just talked with Chris,” he said, “and they haven't found a thing. No cash purchases of vans, no shady types checking into local hotels. If I didn't know better, I'd think Providence County had gone pure overnight.”

“Not quite,” she remarked dryly. “Did you give Chris the names of Will's managers?”

Sam nodded. “They'll split up, Ginny and him, so they can hit all three this morning.” He glanced at his watch. “I'll give the lab a little longer, but I doubt they'll come up with anything useful. This was a clean job, Savvy.”