Night Moves: Dream Man/After the Night (74 page)

“I was the area weirdo. When I started school I didn’t make any friends, but that was okay with me because it was
just too exhausting. Then I found some toddler who had wandered off, and it was in the newspapers, and Dr. Ewell came to talk to my father. I went to the Institute to be tested, liked the peace and quiet of it, and stayed. My father and I were both relieved.”

“Where is he now?” Dane asked.

“Dead. He visited me regularly for a while, but it was uncomfortable for both of us. The visits became further and further apart. He remarried when I was fourteen, I think, and moved to South Dakota. I met his wife only once. She was nice enough, but very uneasy with me. She had two children from her first marriage, but she and Dad didn’t have any. He died of a massive stroke when I was twenty.”

“No other relatives?”

“A few aunts and uncles, and some cousins I’ve never met.”

She had essentially been alone since she’d been a child, he thought. No snuggling, no hugging. No giggling sleep-overs with friends during her teen years. He wondered if she had ever really
been
a child, if she had ever played. Probably not. There was something very adult about Marlie, a mental maturity that went far beyond her years. But despite her unorthodox childhood and, by necessity, very austere lifestyle, she was amazingly normal. Almost any eccentricity could have been justified by her upbringing, but she didn’t have any oddball habits or quirks.

Unless he counted picking up the thought waves of a serial killer.

He looked at the clock, and took one last sip of coffee. “I have to go, honey. This was great. What are we having for supper?”

Caught between amusement, hope, and absolute terror that he evidently planned to stay with her again, all she could do was start laughing. “You’ve just finished breakfast,” she said between giggles.

He pinched her chin. “Even in the
Rubaiyat,
old Omar listed food first.”

“I thought the wine came first.”

“Tells us a lot about him, doesn’t it?” He winked at her and went into the bedroom to finish dressing, and Marlie began clearing the table. She felt giddy. He was coming back that night.

She wondered how he usually conducted his affairs. Was he satisfied with spending a night together every now and then, maybe just the weekends? Or would he come by every night, spend time with her, make love, and then go home to his own house? She didn’t know what to expect. There was a very satisfied air about him that led her to think he was very pleased with the personal outcome of the weekend, but perhaps that was just sexual satiation. She wasn’t experienced enough to tell the difference, assuming there was one. Despite his kindness, his tenderness, even his passion, despite the fact that she had fallen headlong in love with him, she was aware that she really didn’t know him.

He was shrugging into his shoulder holster as he came out of the bedroom. “I forgot that I don’t have a jacket here,” he said, frowning. “I’ll have to stop by my house to get one, so I have to run.” He bent down to kiss her. “ ’Bye, honey. I don’t know how long this will take.”

She put her hands on his chest and lifted herself on tiptoe for another kiss. “I have to do my grocery shopping, if you want anything at all to eat. If I’m not here, that’s where I’ll be.”

He put his arms around her and pulled her close, forcing her hips against his. His mouth settled on hers for a kiss so hard and hungry that she went limp in his arms, shivering with delight. His hands sought her breasts, and rubbed between her legs. He forced her back against the cabinets and swiftly lifted her up onto them, pushing his hips between her spread thighs. She clung to his heavy shoulders, feeling the leather of the holster beneath her palms.

He tore his mouth away with a groan. “God Almighty. We can’t do this. I don’t have time.” Sweat glistened on his forehead, and his eyes had that heavy-lidded, intent look
that nearly made her beg him to stay. But she of all people knew the price of duty, and she forced herself to release him.

“Go,” she said. “Now.”

He stepped back, wincing as he reached down to adjust himself. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, but it may take several hours. Do you have an extra house key?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Let me have it.”

No hesitation or uncertainty for
him
, she thought as she jumped off the countertop and hurried to her purse. She gave him the extra key, and he slipped it onto his key ring. He started to reach for her, for another kiss, but caught himself in time. “Later,” he said, winking at her, and headed for the door.

When he was gone, Marlie collapsed on the couch and tried to take stock of her life. She was wary, even frightened, of what was happening, but nothing on earth could have stopped her from plunging into the experience. For the first time in her life, she was in love, and it was wonderful.

•  •  •

To Dane’s surprise, the chief of police was present at the meeting. Rodger Champlin, tall, white-haired, and stooped from too many years behind a desk, was nevertheless a career policeman who had come up through the ranks, and he had over forty years of service under his belt. He was a sly old dog who had managed to stay abreast of the flood of new technologies involved in police work, rather than stubbornly clinging to the outmoded ways he had learned in his youth.

Bonness’s cramped office wasn’t big enough to hold everyone, so they went into a conference room and closed the door. Ivan was there, his lined face and bloodshot eyes evidence that he had been up all night. All the detectives were there, most of them obviously puzzled by this Sunday morning meeting, especially one that involved the chief.

Bonness was drinking coffee as if it were all that kept him going. From the looks of him, he hadn’t slept much, if at all,
and the hand holding the coffee cup trembled slightly from caffeine overload.

Everyone got his own cup of coffee and settled into his chosen seat. Dane decided to stand, and propped himself against the wall.

Bonness looked down at the sheaf of papers on the table before him, and sighed. He was obviously reluctant to begin, as if officially putting it in words would make it more real.

“People, we have a big problem,” he said. “We only have two cases to compare, but the similarities are so overwhelming that we’re pretty certain we have a serial murderer operating in Orlando.”

Dead silence filled the room as the detectives exchanged glances.

“We were alerted to the possibility,” he said, without going into specifics, “which is why we’re able to get on it so fast.” He passed some of the papers to the detective seated to his right, Mac Stroud. “Take one and pass it down. These are the files on Nadine Vinick and Jacqueline Sheets. Read both of them carefully. Mrs. Vinick was murdered a week ago Friday, Ms. Sheets was killed this past Friday night.”

“So what do we have?” Mac asked.

Bonness looked at Ivan Schaffer. “Nothing,” Ivan said flatly. “Not a damn thing. No fingerprints; he wears gloves. No semen, though vaginal bruising in both women indicates that they were raped. He either wears a condom or uses a foreign object. I haven’t found any stray hairs, either. No footprints, no fibers from his clothing, no witnesses. We have nothing.”

“Let me understand this,” Chief Champlin said. His eyes flashed at the group. “I’m supposed to tell the mayor that there’s a serial killer working in the city, and we don’t have a shred of evidence on him? That even if, by some miracle, we managed to get our hands on him, we couldn’t tie him to the crimes?”

“That’s about it,” Ivan said.

“How can you be so sure it’s the same guy? There have
only been two murders, and stabbing deaths aren’t that unusual—”

“Two stabbing deaths with absolutely no evidence left behind?” Dane interrupted. “Both of them occurred on a Friday night, at roughly the same hour. Both of the murders were done with a knife from the victim’s kitchen, and both times the weapon was left behind. It’s the same guy.” He didn’t mention Marlie, and he was betting that Bonness wouldn’t, either. She would have to be brought into it sooner or later, but he wanted it to be later, when it was the right time and everything was under his control.

“Any connection between the two victims?” Mac asked.

Dane looked at Freddie and Worley, who had handled the paperwork on Jackie Sheets. Freddie shook her head. “There are still several people we need to talk to, but so far we haven’t found any connection at all. They didn’t look alike, they didn’t live in the same neighborhood. Mrs. Vinick was a housewife, Ms. Sheets was a legal secretary. They didn’t frequent the same places. As far as we’ve been able to find out, they never met.”

“We can get a list from the telephone company of the calls made from both residences, and compare them. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they have some numbers in common,” Trammell said. “And there’s the always interesting contents of the trash.”

“And we need to get copies of their canceled checks from the banks.” Dane wrote a note to himself. “Also copies of their charges on any credit cards. There’s a link. There’s always a link.”

“I want to hold off on telling the mayor for a day or so,” the chief said, glaring at all of them. “Until you can come up with a little concrete evidence so I won’t feel as big of a fool as I do right now.”

“The total lack of forensic evidence is a characteristic in itself,” Dane pointed out. “I think we should take it to the FBI for analysis.”

As he had expected, the chief’s face took on a sour
expression. “Goddamn Feds,” he snapped. “Are you saying you aren’t good enough to handle it yourself, Hollister?”

Dane shrugged. All cops were jealous of their jurisdiction, and nobody, especially the old-timers, liked bringing the Bureau in on anything. Inevitably the federal boys got all the credit. “The Investigative Support Unit specializes in this, and I’d say we need all the help we can get. I don’t have to prove that my dick’s bigger than theirs.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Freddie remarked dryly. “But what about me?”

“What about the rest of us?” Worley countered in a plaintive tone.

The room erupted into laughter and a few coarse remarks. Bonness flushed at the lack of decorum, but couldn’t keep himself from grinning. Dane winked at Freddie, and she winked back.

“If all of you are through comparing inches—or lack of them,” the chief said, raising his voice, “maybe we can get back to the business at hand. Okay, maybe we take it to the FBI. But not until I say so, and not until I’ve talked to the mayor. Is that understood? Exhaust all the other avenues first.”

“We can’t afford to wait too long. Another Friday is only five days away.”

“I know what day of the week it is,” the chief snapped. “I’ll talk to him Tuesday afternoon, and that’s the absolute soonest I’ll do it. That means, people, that you have two days to come up with something, so I suggest you all get to work.”

T
HERE WASN
’
T A HELLUVA LOT
that could be done on a Sunday. A call to the Hairport, where Jackie Sheets had regularly gotten her hair cut, didn’t even get an answering machine but instead rang endlessly. No banks were open. The telephone company, however, was on duty and protecting the public’s right to reach out and touch whomever they wanted twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Someone was
always
there, so Dane started the process of getting a listing of all the calls made from the Sheets residence.

Bonness organized a task force, choosing Dane, Trammell, Freddie, and Worley, since the four of them were already working on the two known cases. All of their other ongoing cases were parceled out to the other detectives, who were warned to tie up as many loose ends as they could, as fast as they could, because they would all probably be brought in on the task force soon.

What with one thing and another, it was after four when Dane and Trammell were finally able to leave the building.
Dane squinted up at the bright sky before slipping on his sunglasses. After the morning rain, the day had turned into a scorcher, with the rainfall only adding to the humidity as the heat turned the moisture to steam.

“How’s Grace?” he asked.

Trammell was annoyed. “You sound as if you expect us to elope at any moment, and, old buddy, it ain’t going to happen.” He paused. “Grace is fine.”

“Still at your place?”

Trammell checked his watch. “No.”

Dane chuckled. “Not quite yet, huh? Maybe en route? You made a call right before we left; now, who could it have been to?”

“Fuck you,” Trammell said mildly. “Where are
you
going?”

“Home. To my place.”

Black eyebrows lifted inquiringly.

“To pick up more clothes,” he enlarged, with some satisfaction.

“Why don’t you just pack a suitcase and move in?”

“I would, but I still have to go by the house every day to get my mail, so that wouldn’t be saving me any trouble. Most of my clothes will end up at her house eventually.”

“All of your other girlfriends have moved in with you,” Trammell pointed out.

“Marlie’s different. She feels safe in her house; she won’t willingly leave it.” Besides, he didn’t like the idea of Marlie moving into his own house. As Trammell had pointed out, several women over the years had taken up temporary residence there. He had liked and enjoyed them at the time, but in the end they hadn’t been very important to him, certainly not as important or interesting as his job. Marlie
was
different; she didn’t belong in that company of ultimately forgettable women.