Killing Me Softly

She was encouraged, though, because he stopped holding his ground and instead let her pull him along the path beside her. They crossed the garden and emerged onto the lawn, where the winding footpath continued all the way to the front door. They were nearly to the porch steps when a speeding vehicle came squealing around the curve in the road. Headlights blinded her as she turned in alarm.

Brakes screeched, rubber burning on the pavement, and something flew past, hurled by the driver, smashing right through the Blackberry Inn’s living room window.

Bryan swore and raced toward the car, but it was already peeling out, fishtailing twice before the tires gripped the road, and speeding away.

He grabbed her upper arm and ran with her, up the front porch steps and into the inn. Beth and Josh, Nick and Rico were all standing in the foyer, and Rico’s gun was in his hand. Broken shards of glass littered the floor, and in their midst lay a brick with a piece of paper wrapped around it.

“Is everyone all right?” Bryan shouted.

“Yeah,” Josh told him. “Everyone’s fine.”

“You see anything, Bryan?” Nick asked.

“Black, Olds 88. Probably a ’93 or ’94. Vermont plates, too dirty to make out. Passenger-side taillight was broken.”

Dawn blinked at him, completely awestruck.

“Dawn?” Nick said.

She couldn’t take her eyes off Bryan. This was a side of him she’d never seen. Damn. He really was a cop. She’d known it, but she hadn’t known it. “What?”

“Did you see anything Bryan didn’t?”

“Hell, he lost me at black. And I wouldn’t even have been sure about that much.”

“Beth, can you get me a zipper bag and some salad tongs, please?” Bryan asked.

Beth rushed away and returned with the requested items. Bryan knelt beside the brick, and used the salad tongs to pull the paper off and unfold it. It wasn’t hard to read. Just one word. Murderer.

Dawn could see that it hit Bryan as powerfully as if the brick itself had nailed him in the belly. He actually flinched back from it.

Nick knelt beside him, took the tongs from his hands and used them to tuck the note into the plastic bag. Then he pushed the brick in, as well, lifted up the bag, closed the zip top and handed it to Rico. “You want to take this to the station, or you want me to?”

“I’m headed back there, anyway,” Rico said, and he took the bag and sent a sympathetic look at Bryan. “Hang in there, partner. This is just some ignorant jackass who wouldn’t know a good cop if one was pulling him out from under a bus. Just hang in.”

“I’m trying.” Bryan walked away from the others, head down.

Dawn went after him, put her hand on his shoulder. “We’ll go do what I said,” she told him when they were out of earshot. “It’ll help.”

Bryan shook his head. “No. Not tonight. It’s not safe, Dawn. Besides, it’s not legal. I think we should do this by the book. I get caught tampering with evidence, I’ll look even more guilty than I already do.”

She didn’t think it was possible for him to look more guilty than he already did, but she decided not to say so. Instead, she just nodded slowly. “All right, Bryan. If you’re sure.”

“I am. Besides,” he said, “I feel like I ought to call Bette’s parents tonight. And that’s gonna be—”

“It’s going to be hell. Did you ask your lawyer about doing that? ’Cause it sounds to me like something he’d advise against.”

“I did, and you’re right. He said no way. I’m doing it, anyway.”

He turned and walked up the stairs. Dawn watched him go, more determined than ever to help him. But when she looked toward the front door, her mind made up to go to his house alone, she froze as a shiver of fear worked up her spine.

Okay, maybe it would be stupid to go to the scene of a serial killer’s latest fun fest, in the dead of night, looking like the victim. Yeah. That was it. It wasn’t anything to do with the paralyzing fear of facing a dead girl in the darkness.

She would wait till daylight. That was what she would do.

A hand closed on her shoulder and she turned, knowing it was Nick before she looked at him.

“That brick through the window bullshit shook you up, didn’t it, Dawnie? You all right?”

She nodded. “Just tell me Bryan’s going to be okay.”

“We’re gonna make sure of that, little girl. All of us together. He’s glad you’re here. You know that, right?”

She smiled, liking the man’s easy, reassuring way. “I wasn’t so sure at first. And then I thought maybe he was, and then I wasn’t sure again.”

“He is.”

“I hope you’re right, Nick.”

“About him being glad you’re here? I know I’m right.”

“I meant about us making sure he’s going to be okay. We have to find out who killed Bettina Wright.”

“I hear you,” he told her.

“Don’t you worry, Dawn,” Beth called from the doorway into the dining room. “Nick is one of the best cops who ever served. The chief has put him back on duty, so he has all the authority he needs to help Bryan. And Josh is no slouch, either,” she added with a look behind her at her husband, who was carrying dinner plates into the kitchen. “To say nothing about Rico. And whether you know it yet or not, Bryan’s very good at his job, as well. And then there’s you and me,” Beth went on. “There’s no way we won’t solve this thing.”

Dawn sighed, nodding and wishing she felt as confident as Beth did. “I’m gonna head up to my room,” she said. “It was nice meeting you, Nick. Really nice. I’m glad Bryan has you on his side.” He smiled warmly at her, and she felt a connection with him. Then she turned to the others. “And that goes for you, too, Rico. Night, Beth, Josh.”

“Night, Dawn,” Beth called after her as she hurried up the stairs to her room.

Once inside, with the door closed behind her, Dawn closed her eyes, took a breath and nodded firmly, knowing what she had to do. She went to her bag, which she had yet to unpack, and fished out the pills she used to keep the dead at bay. She took out the bottle of vodka she’d thought she might need if the pills weren’t enough here, where the ghosts had always been waiting. Then she went into the adjoining bathroom and emptied both of them into the toilet. She didn’t want to have them around at all—if the ghosts started showing up again, the temptation to medicate them away might be too great to resist. Best to remove temptation once and for all.

She looked up at the ceiling then. “All right, here’s the deal. I’ll talk to the dead girl. Bettina Wright. But no one else. Okay?”

She waited, goose bumps rising on her arms, demanding she rub them away. But nothing happened. There were no disembodied voices. No pictures hurling themselves off the walls. No misty figures hovering six inches above the carpet.

“Yeah, well, I probably need to give it some time. The Ativan’s probably still in my bloodstream.”

That was most likely it. And even more reason to wait until morning to go to Bryan’s house—the scene of the crime. Maybe by then she would be able to see Bette.

She sank onto the bed, put her hand over her eyes and couldn’t believe she was actually hoping to talk to the dead again. Her father had been right, after all. You couldn’t run away from this thing. She wondered if he’d ever tried. Maybe that was how he knew.

Damn.

5

“You look like hell, Bryan.” Beth met him at the foot of the wide staircase and pressed a hot mug of freshly brewed morning coffee into his hands.

“Thanks.” The fragrant steam wafted up to his nostrils, waking up a few more brain cells, he thought, and took a deep sip. Then he took another as he walked with Beth into the kitchen.

“Didn’t sleep, did you?”

“Tossed and turned until around five. Then I finally passed out.”

“From sheer exhaustion, I’ll bet. You think you can eat?”

“He’ll force himself,” Josh called from the sunny breakfast room off the kitchen.

“He’s right, I will,” Bryan said. “I need to try to keep myself strong through this. Keep my mind sharp, be quick on my feet. It’d be too easy to stop eating or sleeping at all.”

“Go on out with your father, Bry. I’ll bring you a plate.”

Bryan nodded and sipped more of the coffee as he walked through the kitchen, which smelled of bacon and, God help him, cinnamon rolls. He hoped he didn’t look too much like a zombie as he stepped into the sun-drenched breakfast room, which had been added on three years ago. The frame was hardwood, gleaming boards that curved, so that the room looked like the rib cage of a capsized ship. And in between those ribs, nothing but glass.

Josh sat alone at one of the three round tables. Bryan was surprised. Not at the lack of guests—he’d known Beth would cancel any reservations and hustle out the stragglers when all this broke. She would want her full attention on him and his troubles. And on Dawn and her return. But he’d expected to see Dawn there at the breakfast table with his father.

“She’s not here,” Josh told him before he could ask. “Sit down, relax. She’ll be back.”

“Where is she?”

“Borrowed the car,” Beth said, entering the sunroom with three plates heaping with food, one balanced on her forearm. She put one in front of each of the men, then took her own and sat in the empty seat between them. “She said she wanted to take a drive. Maybe pick up a few things in town.”

Bryan lowered his head, and stared at his plate. “And you let her go? Alone?” He lifted his eyes again, spearing his father with his gaze. “Didn’t Nick tell you—”

Josh laid his napkin down while Beth paused, her first bite halfway to her mouth. “If there’s something you feel I should know about, son, then you need to tell me yourself. What is it?”

Bryan closed his eyes. “Of course Nick didn’t tell you—for the same reason I didn’t say anything yet. He probably didn’t want to scare the hell out of you both. Especially Beth. He’s old school about protecting the weaker sex.”

“If he thinks Beth and Dawn are the weaker parts of this family, he doesn’t know them very well,” Josh said, sending Beth a reassuring—and adoring—look.

It didn’t seem to soothe her at all. “What does Nick think he’s protecting me from, Bryan?” Beth asked.

“From knowing that every one of the victims of the Nightcap Strangler was between five foot six and five foot ten, slender, had long, straight, blond to light brown hair, was in her early to mid-twenties, was—”

“You mean they all looked like Dawn,” Beth said, rising from her seat. “But…but you don’t believe this was Nightcap. You said—you said it was a copycat.”

“Either way, she’s not safe running around in public by herself,” Josh said. He rolled his eyes. “Did she say where she was going?”

“Did she ask directions to my place, by any chance?”

Beth nodded. “She said she wanted to just drive past it, see where you lived, where it all happened. Like it might spur her thoughts or something.”

“She’s going to do more than drive by,” Bryan said. He pushed back from the table. “I’d better go after her.” Getting to his feet, he hesitated, reaching back down to grab the cinnamon roll and the coffee.

“But, Bryan,” Beth said. “Couldn’t you get into trouble for going there? It’s a crime scene, and—”

“I’m not going to tamper with evidence. I just need to go get Dawn.” He cupped Beth’s head and leaned down to press a kiss to the top of it. She wasn’t his mother. His own mom had been killed in an airline crash when he’d still been in his teens. But Beth treated him as if he was her own offspring, and he loved her as much as if it were true. “It’ll be okay.”

Dawn drove around a bend and had to stop the car. Ahead, in the distance, she saw a tall, flat-topped rock formation with water shooting off the end of it and plunging downward into oblivion. Beside her, a green road sign read Welcome to Shadow Falls.

The waterfall wasn’t typical, wasn’t what she’d expected—no glittering cascade glinting with the sunlight. The rock was dark, nearly black, and its mass, along with the taller cliffs around it, kept the sun from hitting the falls at all. She supposed at some other time of day they might sparkle and shine. But this early in the morning, the water looked murky and dark.

And she felt an answering murky darkness pooling in the pit of her stomach, but forced herself to put the car into motion again. She didn’t drive into the village, but skirted around it, following Beth’s directions, and soon she found the side street where Bryan lived. The houses were a good distance apart, each one surrounded by privacy and trees and open space. Eventually she found his house number, pulled into the driveway and sat for a moment in the car, looking around. Ahead of her was the garage. Beside her on the right, all too close beside her, was the house itself, the house where a woman had died.

Bryan’s place was a cozy, modest-size ranch-style home near the village itself. It was all made of red bricks. The shutters were black, as was the trim. Must be a guy thing, she thought. There was a small concrete stoop, with three steps and wrought-iron railings. A little black mailbox was attached to one side of the door, beneath an outdoor light without a bulb.

“Honestly, Bry. You’re a cop, for crying out loud. Where’s your outdoor light? And the thorny hedges under all the windows? And the alarm-company-logo lawn sign?”

Of course, he wasn’t there to answer, and she was just killing time. She was scared. And she wasn’t ashamed to admit it. At least, not to herself.

She had to get those files before the cops did. And that was the least intimidating of the two tasks she’d set for herself when she’d rolled out of bed at five-thirty to shower and get dressed. She’d left the inn by six, all in hopes of getting this job done before Bryan figured out what she was up to and tried to stop her.

She pulled on the rubber gloves she’d stolen from Beth’s kitchen drawer, opened her car door and looked around again. It was only seven now, and the traffic along the road was light. On a Sunday morning, it ought to be. Seeing no one, she decided now was the time. And once that decision was made, she knew she had to move fast or risk being caught. Quickly, she trotted around to the side of the garage, tried the door there and found it unlocked. She opened the door, and went inside.

Bryan’s garage was as neat as a pin. And the picnic cooler he’d described to her sat in plain sight on a shelf in the back.

She hurried back there, grabbed it and dashed out the door again, pausing in the doorway to look around, before she popped the trunk. She slung the cooler inside and slammed the trunk closed again. Then she turned, looking and listening.

No one. Not a car passing, or a curious neighbor peering anywhere in sight.

Cool. “Mission accomplished,” she whispered.

Sliding back behind the wheel, she started the car and backed out of the driveway. Then she drove ahead a block and a half, and parked along the roadside, where the car would be less likely to attract notice.

The first part of her mission was complete, she thought. If she didn’t do another thing, at least she’d done that. She’d recovered those incriminating files. Maybe she and Bryan could get them back into the police department records room before anyone realized they were missing, rather than misfiled.

Now, though…now she had to tackle a much more daunting task.

She had to creep inside Bryan’s house and hope there was a dead girl in there, waiting to talk to her.

She was tense. That was pretty much to be expected. There were certain physical sensations that always used to hit her when the dead were getting restless and yearning for a visit. She would feel it every time. A little shiver up her spine. Goose bumps on her forearms. The hair on her nape rising with static electricity. A little bit jumpy, a little bit restless. A weight in the center of her belly, like a lead ball in her solar plexus. Shivers. Chills. Hiccups, sometimes.

Right now she felt taut and jumpy. But as she walked down the road, she didn’t feel any of those other things that usually signaled a close encounter of the dead kind.

Bryan’s driveway was on her left, and she turned to face his house. Yellow tape had been strung up all the way around the place, supported by wooden slats thrust into the ground like miniature fence posts. Stepping over it was easy enough. The tape was only knee-high. It wasn’t meant to be a physical barrier but a warning. Notification that if you crossed it, you were breaking the law. No way to plead ignorance, not with neon-yellow tape glaring at you. A few more pieces zigzagged across the doorway. Gloves still on, she tried the knob, but it was locked, so she proceeded to walk around the house, looking for another way in.

A window was open about two inches. She pushed it up farther, and reached inside to push the curtains apart and look around.

There was no one inside, of course. The place was a mess, though. Clearly no one had cleaned up after the party Bryan had mentioned. It was odd to think of a night of celebration and joy morphing into a morning of violence and death.

She swallowed hard, because she could feel the death there. It was heavy in the air, impossible to describe, but vivid all the same.

“I’m coming inside now, Bette. I hope you’re going to talk to me.”

And then she climbed in through the window, hoping to get this over with before anyone caught her there.

The place reeked of old beer and stale junk food. It was all she could do not to start cleaning up as she moved through the living room, trying to step lightly and not disturb anything. She hated the idea that she might contaminate evidence, but she was fairly certain the forensics team had already gone over the place thoroughly. Hell, there was fingerprint dust everywhere, which made damn little sense to her. There’d been a party. There would be dozens of sets of prints on everything in the place.

Underneath the mess, she thought, Bryan’s place was nice. Spartan, but nice. His sofa was deep-brown rich leather, and there was a recliner that matched except for being just a shade lighter. His throw pillows were green, sage like the carpet. She would have added other colors to break it up, but it was all right as it was. For a guy. He had hardwood bookshelves lined with law-enforcement texts and true-crime stories, and memoirs written by, for and about cops.

Hmm.

She moved closer, scanning the shelves but not touching. Yes, there it was. Nightcap, by Nick Di Marco. Biting her lip, Dawn pulled out the book, touching nothing else, and tucked it into the back of her jeans. She’d heard enough accolades about Bryan’s mentor that she’d fully intended to read his story, or at least see the movie, but hadn’t gotten around to it. Having met him, she was even more curious. She liked Nick Di Marco. Besides, if this killer was copying the Nightcap Strangler, she’d better educate herself on the old case as much as possible.

A small smile pulled at her lips, though most of her was feeling pretty dire. Still, she had to admit, it was exciting, playing amateur detective again.

She would have tucked the book into her purse, only she’d left it in the car. And that made her ask herself if she’d remembered to lock it.

Hell, she wasn’t sure.

Sighing, she moved through the living room, glimpsing the kitchen off to the right. It was white. Way too white. But she didn’t explore it further. Instead, she headed for the hallway to the left, which had to lead to the bedrooms. But she paused at an end table, noticing a framed photo there. A familiar one. It was the same one she kept on her nightstand. A shot of the two of them, her and Bryan, more than five years ago, when they’d been madly in puppy love, arm in arm, smiling into each other’s eyes. A candid moment Beth had captured without telling them. She’d sent an eight-by-ten to Dawn six months after she’d left. And apparently she’d given a copy to Bryan, as well. Hell, it was even in the same antique-looking pewter frame.

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