Chapter Three.
Daisy tried to dismiss it.
Tried very hard.
But she couldn"t even find it in her to doubt him, much less totally dismiss him. Over the next hour, she flipped through the flyers, studying them, looking for a young, pale blonde.
There were a number of them. Had he taken one of them?
She sifted out the five blondes who had disappeared recently, tossing the rest into a basket on her desk, rubbing her temple as she read the names. Should be easy. Bad heart. Hair wasn"t the natural color.
A breeze blew through the room and she absently rubbed her arms, not noticing as one of the flyers in the basket drifted to the floor.
A young girl, teenaged, pale skinned, her brunette hair waving around her narrow face, stared up from the grainy photo. The words urgent right below her picture would have caught Daisy"s eye if she had seen it.
When somebody called into her office fifteen minutes later, she pushed the flyers aside, scowling as Deputy Jake Morris grinned at her from the doorway. "This is the third time Myrtle has called the office. She"ll only talk to you, Daisy," he said, laughter dancing in his eyes.
"I can"t help that some stray dogs are s.h.i.tting in her petunias," Daisy muttered, smoothing a hand across her hair, tucking a stray lock behind her ear.
"Roses. It"s her rose bushes this time," he said helpfully. "You going to talk to her?"
Sourly, Daisy muttered, "Why in the h.e.l.l should I? She"ll just keep calling until I go out there."
"Should I tell her that you"re on your way?"
"Yes." Lifting her eyes skyward, she murmured, "Give me patience."
Twenty minutes later, Daisy repeated, for the fifth time, "Mrs. Morrow, please, if you will tell me what the dog looked like, maybe we can figure out if it has an owner. But unless you see the dog, there"s not much I can do."
Daisy covered her nose as Myrtle Morrow waved a blue plastic grocery bag in front of her, the stench of the dog p.o.o.p inside the bag drifting out to flood her nose. "You"re telling me you won"t help me?" Mrs. Morrow demanded in strident tones.
"I"m saying I can"t-not unless you can at least tell me what the dog looks like," Daisy said, trying not to grit her teeth. She didn"t know if she had succeeded though.
"It"s a dog!"
Daisy rubbed her temple and said, "Listen. We have more than three hundred and thirty three dogs in the town limits. I checked. And more strays than I care to think about. So unless you have an idea to figure out which of those three hundred plus pooches c.r.a.pped in the rose bushes, I don"t know what I can do."
A chill ran down her spine, making her shiver. The skin on the back of her neck p.r.i.c.kled, and the feeling of being watched settled within her. Blinking, she forced herself to focus on Myrtle, taking her arm and guiding her back to her porch. She made the appropriate sympathetic noises as the old woman brandished the p.o.o.p bag and gestured wildly toward her roses.
"I"ll find the dog. I"ll stay up night and day if I have to," Myrtle muttered, staring at the bag and sulking.
"And as soon as you can tell me what it looks like, I"ll do what I can," Daisy promised.
Which wouldn"t be much, because Myrtle would most likely describe a dog that matched the description of half the strays and registered pets in town. But at least Daisy was able to walk away from her house. Sliding into her car, she checked the rearview mirror. n.o.body around that she could see. But somebody was watching her. She could feel it.
It felt like somebody was trying to puzzle her out.
But there was n.o.body even around, that she could see. Myrtle lived at the end of a cul-de-sac and there was only one other house on her street. The Busseys were out of town on vacation and Myrtle had most likely gone inside to sulk some more over her roses.
With a sigh, she started the car and headed back to town. "I"m losing my mind."
"She"s a good cop."
Michael closed his eyes as Lucas wavered into view.
"Leave her alone, Lucas," he said tiredly. It was a waste of time. Lucas was feeling the need to investigate, which meant he was going to do everything but leave her alone.
Not good.
He sensed something about Daisy Crandall that made his skin itch. She had believed him all too easily. Cops didn"t do that. And it didn"t matter that her badge said County Sheriff. Still a cop.
She should have been a lot more skeptical.
The only reason that made sence as to why she didn"t scoff at him...she knew he wasn"t lying.
Some people had that knowledge, the ability to look at somebody and know whether that person was telling them lies-or truth. She had known. Plain and simple. And if she could sense truth, she could possibly sense other things. He"d rather she not know about the ghost that followed him.
"I like her."
Now Michael frowned. Staring at Lucas, he c.o.c.ked a brow, waiting. Lucas hadn"t ever said that about anybody before. He wouldn"t like somebody he couldn"t trust. He"d been very cautious in life about who he cared for-death had only enhanced that.
Lucas shrugged as he met his brother"s stare. It was an odd gesture, one that made his mostly solid image ripple for a moment and Michael saw the outline of the dresser behind Lucas for the briefest second. "She"s...solid," Lucas finally said. "And sad. There"s something broken inside her."
Michael felt his heart clench at Lucas" words. Yes, he had sensed the grief inside the pretty, sloe-eyed woman. It had left an urge inside him, to go to her and cuddle her against him, stroke away the bleak look in her pretty brown eyes. "Nothing I can do about that," he murmured. He wished he had just moved on. There were complications here that he didn"t need-complications that went beyond the ghost of a murdered woman and a missing runaway.
But she pulled at him...not just the ghost.
The sheriff.
Too often, the only people that could hold his interest were the dead. They whispered to him at night, surrounded him during the day. But the living, they rarely held any interest for him.
He felt her determination to find the murderer, a deep, steady intent that all but colored the air around her. Solid. Yes...true blue. Loyal, determined, steady, through and through.
Michael couldn"t walk away until he knew there would be no more ghosts behind him when he left. Which meant stopping the killer.
Running his tongue along his teeth, he studied the articles in front of him, sifting through to find the earliest one. Six dead women. Going back a year and half. The last two had both been killed within the past four months. The killer was escalating. They developed a taste for it, a need. Time pa.s.sed and they had to kill more often, more frequently.
More violently.
Were there only the four? Or had he hidden some of the victims?
Areas like this were thick with woods and valleys, easy places to hide bodies. These four had been local. But Michael knew there was one out there that wasn"t from around here. A runaway...somebody barely more than a child. If he had taken one runaway, he"d likely taken others.
So possibly more murders than they knew about.
Rubbing his thumb across his chin, he contemplated the grainy picture in the paper. Pretty. Young...in her twenties. But the second one was in her early forties. And then a college coed who"d been home on summer break. The fourth one, the nurse, the ghost he had met earlier-28, married, mom with kids. Only thing they really had in common...they were female and white.
No pattern. That made it harder to pin things down.
There was something else that had to link them.
"What"s the d.a.m.ned link?" he muttered, shoving a hand through his hair.
"You know, some people just like to kill."
"Yeah, but they usually have a preferred sort of victim," Mike said absently.
"You"ve become too much like a cop."
Mike smiled. "I don"t know what else there is left for me to be, Lucas."
A cool breeze drifted through the room.
Feeling the heavy weight of emotion that seemed to roll from Lucas, he looked up. "It"s not your fault," he said quietly. "And this isn"t a bad rap, you know."
"You wade through the s.h.i.ttiest type of sc.u.m known to man, Mikey. You"ve put yourself inside the heads of monsters-I see how sick it makes you. I know how angry it makes you. I know it hurts. And you want me to buy that it"s not a bad rap." Lucas shook his head. His eyes were so full of grief, it hurt to even look at his brother, but Mike wouldn"t look away.
"Yeah. I want you to believe it." Scrubbing his hands over his face, he sighed. Pushing back from the small desk, Mike started to pace the tight confines of the hotel room. "Yeah. I"ve had to deal with s.h.i.t. But you and me...we"ve been doing that all our lives. It"s not like I don"t know how to handle it."
"I should have tried harder. We should have left sooner."
"Neither of us could have known how low she would have stooped. Or what kind of messes she had gotten involved in," Mike said quietly.
Lucas spun away. The force of rage flooding him had made his image wavery and Mike could barely see him. "I should have. I knew her-I knew what kind of sc.u.m she was involved in, knew better than you what she was capable of. I was supposed to protect you, Mikey. I failed. I shouldn"t have let this happen to you."
"It happened to you," Mike said.
"It happened to us both."
That stopped him in mid-stride. He turned around, looking across the room at his brother. "Guess it did. And it happened for a reason. If it hadn"t..." Grisly images, things he"d rather forget, rolled through his mind. No, he didn"t want to remember many things that he"d seen in the past ten or fifteen years of his life. But lives had been saved because of it, killers had been stopped. "There"s a man sitting in jail right now because of what happened to me. His last victim didn"t die. We got to him before he could hurt her. You know what? I couldn"t have stopped him if I was your everyday average Jones, Lucas. It may not be the easiest thing to live with, but I"d rather have some bad nights and know that b.a.s.t.a.r.d will never kill anybody again, then to change it."
"Don"t you think you"ve done enough, Mike?"
Focusing on the papers in front of him, he blew out a breath. "No. There"s a girl out there, Lucas. A kid. He has a kid. And I"m not going to stop until I"ve stopped him."
"And then there will be another. And another...and another. When will it ever be enough?"
"That"s the way it works."
As Lucas" presence faded away, Mike focused again on the information in front of him.
You hurt that girl, you son of a b.i.t.c.h, and you"re going to die.
Tanya felt it in her heart when the girl died.
The blackness that surrounded the cabin expanded and she wanted to flee, but at the same time, her own anger kept her chained. She had hoped...had prayed...the man, she"d thought he would help. He hadn"t, though.
Tanya waited and waited but he never came and now it was too late.
Terror welled inside. Only one thing caused that. Him-the killer. The killer was coming. Her killer. "My killer," she whispered.
Her throat felt tight. It was weird. She could still feel things. When Michael had touched her earlier, she had felt it. His arms had felt bizarrely hot, like he"d had a fever. It had been get a shock, all over her body and it left her skin buzzing and burning, in a very, very painful way.
Did she feel cold to him?
She wanted to run. But the only place she could go was the field. She already knew that. And that was just as bad as here. Every time she ended up there, she kept remembering what she had seen. She"d run there the first time. Because he had come here. To clean up after he had killed her. She ran, and she found herself. She saw what he did to her. Seeing it was just as bad as feeling it, in a different way.
Tanya had watched as two childhood friends led the police to her body. She was stuck there, watching as Daisy and her deputies searched for clues that would lead to him. Deep inside, Tanya knew that she knew who he was. But it was like she"d closed the door on his memory, on his face. She couldn"t look at him. Wouldn"t.
The terror inside grew so thick it was choking her, flooding her. She couldn"t keep doing that. Needed to see him. Had to. So she could tell Michael. Michael was there to help. He could tell Daisy. G.o.d...Daisy. Tears squeezed out of her eyes and Tanya had to bite back the scream that was building in her throat. They had been planning to go into town and watch a movie. Get a few drinks...just have a girl day.
They wouldn"t do that now. There would never be another girl day. She"d never take her daughter shopping for that dress. Amy"s first big dance was next month and Tanya wasn"t ever going to see her, wouldn"t be able to take pictures... She"d lost out on all of it.
Rage started to edge back the terror even though the blackness moved closer. He was moving closer. Turning, Tanya stared at the still body of the girl lying tied to the cot. "I"m so sorry, sweetie," she whispered.
The girl just lay there.
Her body was still covered. She hadn"t been battered...beaten...cut, or raped. Not yet. Tanya couldn"t help but feel a little jealous. "You got off easy, baby. I wish I"d died before he touched me."
He felt the voice. At first, he was convinced it was his own imagination, but then, as it continued to echo inside his mind, he had to wonder.
And there was a stranger in town-one who had been seen talking to the sheriff. One who had been seen out where Tanya"s body had been found. He was a big, mean looking b.a.s.t.a.r.d with sharp eyes.
He hadn"t heard that voice, either, not until that man had shown up. Now it was like he wouldn"t shut up. This was not good. Not at all. As the echo of the words ran through the man"s mind, repeating themselves over and over, he started to worry.
Let her go... Let her go now, and maybe I won"t kill you when I find you.
Shaken, he jogged out of the house and leaped into his truck, whipping it around and speeding for the cabin where the girl was kept. She lay there, sweet, innocuous...and dead.
He bellowed with rage, launching himself to the cot and grabbing one wrist. A pulse...there would be a pulse. She wasn"t dead, she was playacting to try and get free. Stupid little b.i.t.c.h. She was going to pay for this. d.a.m.n it, n.o.body cheated him. n.o.body.
But the skin was cool-she had a pasty, grayish blue cast to her skin and her eyes stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. There was a weird little curl to her lips, almost a smile. Mocking him.
She"d been dead a while.