Superstition (25 page)

Sid nodded as if she’d said something wise. “It was indeed. And don’t think for a moment that we’re not going to do our best to make sure that Miss Wise—and you—get the justice you both deserve. Given the realities of small-town police departments, though, this crime is very likely to remain unsolved—unless we stay on top of it. Put some pressure on them. Keep their feet to the fire, as it were. What I want to do is have
Twenty-four Hours Investigates
follow the ongoing investigation into Miss Wise’s death. I want a reporter down there on the scene full-time, working right along with the police department, letting our viewers inside the case. We’ll do a fifteen-minute segment on the next two shows, promote the hell out of them, do some spots on our other shows—you know, tie-ins, cross-promotion, that kind of thing—then do a wrap-up—probably a full hour special like the one you just did—in which we solve the crime. Last week of sweeps. We’ll promote the
hell
out of that. There’s no telling what kind of numbers we’ll get.”

Just thinking about it made his cheeks flush and his eyes gleam. If ever a man could be said to gloat, Sid was gloating then.

Nicky wasn’t. The purpose of her summons to Mount Olympus was becoming all too horribly clear. Sid wanted her to go back to Pawleys Island, back to where Karen had died and where she had nearly been killed, deliberately putting herself in harm’s way, raking up the dreadful memories, exposing her raw and at the moment painfully gun-shy psyche to the terror that waited for her there.

To juice the ratings.

“I’m not sure three weeks is going to be enough time to actually identify the murderer,” Nicky pointed out in as neutral a tone as she could muster. She could feel her palms growing damp, feel her insides start to twist and tighten.

She couldn’t go back. Not now. Maybe not ever. Just considering the possibility made her woozy.

Sid waved a dismissive hand. “As long as we give ’em something—a theory, a profile, maybe even another psychic session with your mother . . . now there’s an idea; that’d be great—we’re covered. At the end of the day, the point isn’t what we give ’em. The point is to get them to tune in.”

I can’t do it.

The words popped into her head out of nowhere. Nicky swallowed them before they could be said, but they scrolled through her mind in bright neon letters nonetheless.

Lazarus508 would be there on the island waiting. She felt it,
knew it. . . .

Gritting her teeth, she tried to fight back the threatening tide of panic.

“You’re looking kind of pale, Nicky. Are you all right?” Carl asked.

Her gaze slid sideways to him. He was leaning toward her, looking oh-so-solicitous. Anybody who didn’t know him—like, say, Sid—might actually think he was concerned about her well-being.

But she knew him.

“Which brings me to the other thing I wanted to say to you,” Sid continued smoothly, his eyes, like Carl’s, on her face.

Nicky tried to keep her face unreadable. Day in and day out, for the entire eight years that she’d been in television, she had been working with predators. The entire industry was rife with them. They were everywhere, waiting like jackals to pounce on those who became weak and vulnerable.

There was no way she was going to let herself even seem to falter in her present company.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“The idea for the special, the whole séance angle, it was all yours, and I want you to know that I won’t forget your good work on it. But given what you’ve already been through with this, we sure as God can’t ask you to do more. That being the case, I’m giving this assignment to Carl.”

11

“
W
HAT?”
Nicky shot up out of her chair. “No! You can’t do that!”

“I had an idea you might be upset,” Sid began, but Nicky interrupted, planting both hands flat on his desk and leaning toward him.

“Upset? I’m not upset. I’m damned
mad
,” she roared, and had the momentary satisfaction of seeing Sid’s eyes widen as he rocked back in his chair to, it seemed, put as much space between them as possible. “That’s
my
story!”

“It’s just . . . it would be much
safer
for a man,” Sid said, blinking at her, seemingly taken aback by the vehemence of her response. “And . . . and Carl’s had more experience with crime reporting. . . .”

Nicky’s head snapped around so that Carl was in her sights. He was looking at her, his expression faintly alarmed. Or, at least, she would have thought it was faintly alarmed if she hadn’t seen the glint of satisfaction lurking in his eyes.

That glint gave her pause. Carl had known about this. Carl had probably lobbied hard for this. Carl had, in fact, played Sid like a fish. He was being vintage Carl: underhanded, backstabbing, and
smart.

Okay, maybe blowing up at the Head Honcho wasn’t the best way to handle the situation, especially when she was fighting for her professional future here. Carl, the snake, would ride the wave of interest in Karen’s death as far as it would take him. As far as Nicky was concerned, the general idea of exploiting that horrible tragedy for ratings was all but unthinkable. It was sordid. It was repugnant. For her, the prospect of returning to Pawleys Island to investigate the murder was terrifying. It would be psychologically traumatic. It would probably be physically dangerous. In theory, she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with it.

But if she didn’t do it, Carl was going to.

Reining in her temper with an effort, Nicky swung her gaze back around to Sid.

“I grew up on Pawleys Island,” she said in an even tone. “I know the layout and history of the Old Taylor Place—the house we did the show in, where Karen and those three girls were murdered—because I was there as a guest as a child. I know just about everybody on the island, certainly all the old-timers. My mother—the psychic you want to get to do another séance on the wrap-up show—owns a house there. In addition, she is
my mother
.” She resisted the urge to glance at Carl again. “You tell me how Carl can compete with that.”

“Miss Wise was murdered, and you were attacked,” Sid said, sounding unhappy. “We just can’t take a chance on sending you back down there.”

“The killer might try to take you out again,” Carl added. He was leaning forward in his chair now, his hands gripping the ends of the arms, his gaze intense as he transferred his attention to Sid. “Not only am I the more experienced reporter, but I won’t have that problem. No serial killer who’s interested in chicks is going to mess with me.”

“I have access. You don’t,” Nicky shot back, straightening to glare at Carl. “You’ll find you have a hard time getting the locals to open up to you. You don’t know who anybody is, or where anything is. And if you think
my mother
is going to do a séance for you, you’re wrong.” Her gaze switched back to Sid. “She won’t do it. Trust me.”

“There are lots of psychics out there,” Carl growled.

“Psychics are a dime a dozen. As for
access,
all it takes is a good reporter, which you would know if you were one.”

“Oh, yeah?” Nicky planted her fists on her hips and smiled at him. It wasn’t a nice smile. “I already have a source in the police department and inside information that you’ll never get. Inside information that
no one
has but me.”

“She’s lying,” Carl said to Sid.

“He wishes,” Nicky said to Sid.

Sid held up a stubby-fingered hand, looking from one of them to the other with a frown.

“You’ve done a good job on this for us,” Sid said to Nicky. “I have absolutely no problem with anything you’ve done on camera the whole time you’ve been working for
Twenty-four Hours Investigates,
and the special was fantastic. Taking you off the story is not a punishment of any sort. I want you to understand that. We just want to keep you safe while providing our viewers with the best information we can.”

Carl looked smug. Nicky, who interpreted this speech to mean that she was about to be told that the story was now irrevocably Carl’s, felt desperate.

“He’s been contacting me,” she said. “The killer.”

A beat passed while both Sid and Carl stared at her.

“What?” Sid said finally.

Nicky nodded. “First he called me. Then he sent me an e-mail.”

“You’re lying,” Carl said.

Nicky shook her head.

“Now that’s a story,” Sid said. “What did he say?”

Nicky smiled.

“I’ll talk about it on the air—
if
the story is mine. If not, I’m afraid I can only talk about it to the police. Carl can try to develop a source in the police department who’ll tell him all about it, of course, but . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she shrugged. “These things take time. And you said three weeks?”

“That’s blackmail,” Carl burst out angrily. To Sid, he added, “You aren’t going to let her get away with that, are you?”

Sid looked reflective for a moment.

“If she doesn’t want to tell us something, I don’t see how we can make her,” Sid said in a reasonable tone. “And she’s right about the local access. And the psychic being her mother. And the time frame. And if she’s in contact with the killer . . . admit it, Carl, you can’t compete with that. And if
she’s
not concerned about her safety . . .” His voice trailed off as he shrugged. He looked at Nicky, snapped his fingers, and pointed a stubby forefinger at her. “Okay, Nicky, the story’s yours. Go get it.”

HAVING A PIG WATCH HIM while he ate his breakfast was the antithesis of a digestion aid, Joe reflected as he sat at his kitchen table, downing a plate of bacon and eggs while the possible kin of half his meal stared at him through the glass window in his back door. The damned thing must have been able to see through the mini-blinds—hell, he could see through the mini-blinds, so there was no reason it shouldn’t be able to. Its round, black snout was pressed to the glass, and its beady little black eyes were staring right at him. The really weird thing was that it hadn’t appeared in the window until the bacon had started sizzling and splattering in the skillet. Then he had gotten the prickle-between-theshoulderblades feeling that meant he was being watched and whipped around, the fork with which he had turned the meat still in his hand. There the damned pig had been, looking at him almost as though it knew what he was cooking.

By now Joe was almost willing to swear that its expression was accusing.

“Get lost, pig,” Joe said to it, as he had at least half a dozen times in varying forms in the last five minutes. The pig didn’t budge. It either couldn’t hear, didn’t understand, or was plotting its next move.

Joe felt like an idiot for talking to it. To compensate, he ostentatiously picked up a crispy brown slice of bacon and opened his mouth.

The pig grunted. He could hear it through the door.

He eyed the pig. He eyed the bacon.

The pig grunted again.

“Goddammit,”
he said bitterly, and put the bacon down.

The pig stayed put. He could feel its eyes on him as he pushed his still half-full plate away and, taking a sip of coffee and lighting a cigarette instead, returned his attention to the file that was spread out on the table. The e-mail that Nicky had sent him was on top.

He’d already read it so many times that he could recite the lines from memory.

The question was, what the hell, if anything, did they actually mean?

It was eight-forty-seven a.m., he’d gotten more than six hours of sleep, and he should have been wide awake, clearheaded, and filled with fresh enthusiasm for the job he had in front of him. Instead, he felt about as fresh as last week’s garbage. His mouth was as dry as if it had been stuffed full of cotton, his eyes burned, and he had a killer headache, which half a breakfast, two cigarettes, and his coffee so far hadn’t touched.

The damned e-mail tortured him with its possibilities. He turned them over in his mind, trying out various interpretations without being convinced by any of them, and finally ended up sitting with his head in his hands, staring at the pig in frustration.

Outside, the sun was shining. The sky was a beautiful baby blue dotted with fluffy, white clouds that looked like sleeping lambs. Beyond the less-than-lovely visage of the pig, he could see that the stage was set for one more glorious day in paradise. The purply foliage of the black gum fluttered like blackbirds’ wings, ruffled by what he knew from experience would be the warm, salt-tinged breeze that regularly blew in from the ocean in the mornings and evenings. The golden-yellow sunflowers had already shaken off the morning dew and were turning their dinner-plate-sized faces toward the sun. The gulls would be calling, the tide would be going out, and fishing boats and small yachts would be making their way down Salt Marsh Creek toward the ocean. The clam-diggers and early-morning joggers would be coming in from the beach, while the day-trippers and sun baskers would be heading out for a day in the sun.

Inside, the kitchen looked like crap, smelled like coffee and cigarette smoke and grease, and felt airless. Joe probably looked like crap, smelled like coffee and cigarette smoke and grease, and felt airless, too. In the jacket and tie that Vince insisted he wear since the two of them were scheduled to talk to the local media at nine-thirty, he was already too hot. The cooling effects of the bedroom air conditioner didn’t do a thing for the kitchen, which was at the other end of the house, and the kitchen’s windowless state precluded installing a second air conditioner in there.

Ordinarily, he opened the back door while he cooked to air the place out.

Ordinarily, there was not a pig with its snout pressed to his door.

A loud banging on his front door—the bell had been broken when he had moved in, and he hadn’t yet gotten around to fixing it—distracted him, and he got up to answer it. It was Dave, as expected, and about time, too.