Читать книгу Killing Me Softly - Maggie Shayne - Страница 9

“It wasn’t the three hours of questioning that got to me,” Bryan said to his father. He had one hand braced on the mantel and was staring into the Blackberry Inn’s oversize fireplace as if there were dancing flames to contemplate. Which there were not. It was midsummer and still too warm for a fire, even in Vermont. But staring at the dark, empty hearth kept him from letting his eyes get stuck on one of the countless photos of Dawn, or him and Dawn together, that littered every room of this place.

She was on her way. Right now. Beth was picking her up at the airport in Burlington, an hour away. She would be here soon. Any minute now, and he could barely believe he was going to see her again for the first time in five years. He was going to see her again, now, in the middle of the biggest mess he’d ever landed in. He was going to see her. And it was going to rip his guts out.

“So what did?” Josh asked.

“What did what?” Bryan glanced at his father, sitting in the big rocker recliner with a cup of coffee and looking less like the relaxed, content innkeeper than he had since he’d first arrived in this town. Not that he ever really fit the stereotype, with his athletic build and good looks. Bryan took after him, and thanked his lucky stars often for his father’s genes.

But Josh had relaxed a lot since retiring from government work to run the inn alongside his wife. Tonight, though, Bryan could see the lines of tension creasing his brow. He was worried about his only son. This whole thing had his stoic, easygoing father shaken, and that scared him.

“You said it wasn’t the questioning that got to you,” Josh said. “So what did?”

“The lawyer.” Bryan’s glance slid sideways, from his dad’s worried, rugged face to the photo on the end table. Dawn, leaning on a classic Dodge Charger, wearing overalls, a wrench in one hand and a smudge of grease on her cheek. Must have been one she’d sent them from California. He jerked his attention away from it and tried to stay focused on the subject at hand. The lawyer his father and Nick had sent to his rescue.

“I’m a cop. I hate lawyers,” he said, elaborating on his previous statement.

“That’s fine—until you need one.”

“That’s just it, I don’t need one. Or at least, I shouldn’t. I didn’t do anything.”

“You woke up in bed with a murder victim, son.”

Bryan thinned his lips. “The mouthpiece wouldn’t let me say a hell of a lot. Kept interrupting when the chief was questioning me, telling me not to answer. Hell, he made me think I looked guilty.”

“It’s for the best, Bryan. You have to protect yourself.”

“I know that. I just—I know what I think when a suspect lawyers up and won’t talk. I hate like hell to have my colleagues thinking that way about me. Especially Chief Mac. I’d prefer to just tell him everything and ask him to help me sort it all out.”

“I know.”

Headlights slid over the walls as a car pulled into the driveway. Bryan closed his eyes slowly, tried to brace himself for whatever feelings were going to assault him at the sight of Dawn. But he was damned if he knew which ones to expect. It had been so long. Part of him hated her, and part of him ached for her. And all of him resented the fact that she wouldn’t be here at all if his life wasn’t on the line. He wondered if he was supposed to be grateful she would rush home because he was in crisis. He wasn’t. He was angry that it took a crisis to get her here. Hell, he hadn’t blamed her for running off without a word after all that had happened. Having the dead just start talking to you had to be bad enough. Having your dead father leading the crowd of ghosts to your door was too much, especially when your dead father had been a homicidal maniac.

So she panicked. She freaked. She ran away. No goodbye, no warning, nothing. She was just gone. And he could have forgiven that, if she had just called after things calmed down. But she didn’t call, and she didn’t write. She spoke to Beth, her birth mother, and anything Bryan learned about her life came through her. Second hand news of the woman he loved. It was insulting.

There was no excuse for letting it go on for five long years. None.

Still, he turned toward the front door as footsteps crossed the porch. He strained his eyes when he saw the foggy outline of her beyond the frosted-glass panes. And then the door opened and she walked in, Beth close behind her.

Dawn met his eyes, and he just stood there, mute, staring at her and thinking his heart was going to pound a hole in his chest, and wondering if it would fall onto the floor before or after it stopped beating.

Her hair was still long. Still its natural shade of dark honey and amber gold, perhaps with a few lighter high lights, no doubt thanks to the California sun. But her face had changed. Grown thinner. Her cheekbones were more prominent than before, which might be partly because she was older now, but he thought it might also be that she’d lost weight. Hell, she was so damn thin. And the tender skin underneath her eyes seemed pink and puffy. As if she’d been crying.

Over him?

Hell, who was he kidding?

He wondered, briefly, what she was seeing as she stared at him. What changes was she noticing? He imagined he’d changed quite a bit, too, in the course of five years.

Finally she said, “Hey, Bryan. How are you holding up?”

Just like that. As if there wasn’t a week-long conversation that should happen before that casual hello. He shrugged. “Damned if I know. I don’t think it’s all had a chance to sink in yet, to tell you the truth.” He moved toward her, but not too close, just enough to reach out and take the suitcase from her hand. “How about you?” he asked. “You look…tired.”

“Gee, thanks.”

He shrugged, not overly concerned that he’d sort of insulted her just then. Hell, she’d done worse to him, hadn’t she?

“It was a long flight,” Beth said quickly. “Naturally she’s tired.”

Bryan could see the worried looks passing between Beth and Josh from the corner of his eye, though he couldn’t really take his eyes off Dawn. “You’ve lost weight,” he said.

“That doesn’t sound like a compliment, either,” she replied.

“It wasn’t.” He sighed and lowered his head, turning toward the stairs. “You didn’t need to come, you know. There’s not a damn thing you can do.”

“Hey, don’t think I didn’t try that argument, Bry. Beth didn’t buy it, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I’m here. Deal with it.”

He was halfway up the stairs when he replied, “I’ve got enough to deal with already, thanks.” He finished climbing the stairs, avoiding the muttering going on behind him. The three of them discussing his mental state, no doubt. Then he was out of range, at last. He headed down the hall to the room Beth had chosen for Dawn and set her suitcase just inside the door. Then he kept going, to the next room, his room, and once inside, he closed the door, sat on his bed and lowered his head to his hands. Damn, damn, damn. He hadn’t wanted to snap at her. He’d wanted to wrap her up in his arms and hold her, just hold her, for a long, long time. He’d wanted to feel her right there, against him, warm and alive, more than just a memory.

Which made it even more irritating that she, apparently, had no such sentimental notions about him.

“I’m sorry,” Dawn said. “I should have—maybe I—”

Beth hushed her. “You two have a lot to talk about, to work through. It’s high time, Dawn. It’s past time. Adults do not just stop communicating with people they care about. They talk it out.”

Dawn pressed her lips together more tightly to avoid saying anything that might sound rude, since several snotty rejoinders were knocking against her teeth in an effort to escape.

Josh closed a hand on her shoulder. “He was glad to see you, hon. I realize it didn’t seem that way to you, but I know him better than anyone else in the world. He was glad to see you, and more than that, he needs you. He needs you more than he needs anything or anyone right now. So I’m asking you to swallow your pride and be there for him.”

She nodded, not believing a word of it. It would have been nice to believe it, but it just didn’t make any sense. Bryan hated her. And she couldn’t blame him, because he had every reason to hate her. That made sense. But she didn’t argue with Josh. She just said, “I’ll try my best.”

“Good.” He smiled. “I think I jumped ahead a little, though.” And then he hugged her. “Welcome home, Dawn.”

“Thanks, Josh.” She relaxed and hugged him back. “Thanks. It’s good to be back.”

“It is?” he asked.

She smiled at him and shrugged. “Well, it might be too soon to tell. But it feels good at the moment.”

Beth said, “It does my heart good to hear that.”

Dawn felt bad. Her lack of enthusiasm had probably hurt her mother’s feelings, and that wasn’t what she’d intended. “I think I’ll go on upstairs,” she said. “I’d like to take a shower, freshen up before dinner. It was a long flight.”

“Food’ll be on the table in an hour.”

“All right.” Dawn hugged her mother. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“Thanks for coming. Just take it slow, okay? Just take it nice and slow.”

Dawn nodded, unsure what it was her mom wanted her to take so slowly, but not wanting to open the can of worms she thought lay behind that comment. So she headed up the stairs, but slowly. With every step she took, she half expected to see some shady, vaporous apparition, or to hear some disembodied voice. Most of all, she expected to encounter her long-dead father, demanding that she accept her “gift.” Her “calling,” as he’d referred to it.

She hadn’t seen or spoken to a dead person since she’d spent her first night in San Bernadino. Maybe that was due to the Ativan she’d been prescribed by the first doctor she’d trusted with the truth. Or maybe it was something to do with the distance, as little sense as that made. She only knew she didn’t want to come back here and face the ghosts again. She didn’t want the damn gift that had become so twisted and corrupt it had rotted her father’s mind, turning him into a murderer who honestly believed he was doing God’s will when he killed.

She didn’t want any of it.

She entered her room and stood there, just inside the open door, looking around but seeing nothing. No ghosts. “If I hear even one peep, see even one misty shape in the night, I’m out of here. I hope you’re getting that.”

“Loud and clear.”

She nearly jumped right out of her skin as she spun around to see Bryan leaning against the door frame. One hand on her chest, she closed her eyes slowly and willed her heart to slow down.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to give you a heart attack.”

She took a deep breath. “It’s okay. Come on in, Bry.”

“You sure?”

She nodded and stepped aside to give him room to pass. He walked in, looked around the bedroom. “You, uh, you alone in here?”

She smiled. “Yeah, I’m alone.” Bryan had been matter-of-fact about her “abilities” ever since she’d first told him about them. He hadn’t doubted her. Hadn’t thought she was crazy. Hadn’t been all weirded out about it. It had barely fazed him, except that he worried about her. And in return, she’d walked out and left him a note that really didn’t say a damn thing.

“So, uh, no ghosts in California, huh?”

“Not for me, at least. I haven’t…heard from any of them since I first got there.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

She lowered her head, not meeting his eyes. “I don’t know. Distance. Medication. Vodka, when the other two aren’t enough.”

When she glanced up again, he was frowning, studying her face and probably getting ready to comment on her methods of ghost-dodging. But he seemed to change his mind. “And now that you’re back?” he asked.

“Nothing yet. I hope to God there won’t be.”

He nodded, sighed heavily. “You told Beth it wasn’t me you were running away from. That it was them. You said you needed time. But I don’t think you were being entirely honest.”

“I don’t want to talk about that, Bryan. About us. About what we had. It’s history. I know I hurt you, and I’m sorry. But I did what I had to do, and it was five years ago. I’m just not up to rehashing it all. Not now.”

His eyes narrowed. She thought she saw a flash of anger, but he banked it fast. “It’s not all that important, anyway,” he said.

Her brain immediately registered it as a lie.

“Look, Bry, can we just skip all that for the moment? Just focus on what’s going on here and now instead? ’Cause this is a big thing, you being implicated in a murder. All this ancient history between us, it can wait. Can’t it?”

He met her eyes. “It’s waited for five years already,” he said. “I’ve waited for five years.”

“You weren’t exactly waiting,” she said. “I mean, this poor woman—she died in your bed, after all.”

He lifted his brows and took two steps closer to her. “Does that bother you, Dawn?”

“Of course not.” But she averted her eyes when she said it, cursing herself afterward for being so obvious.

“Did you think I was going to be celibate for five years? Did you really think one night losing our virginity to each other was going to sustain either of us for the next half decade? ’Cause that’s crazier than talking to dead people.”

“Let it go, Bry. I’m not up to this, not yet.”

He watched her face for a moment, as if waiting for her to give something more away, and when she didn’t, he finally nodded. “Fine. It’s waited five years—it can wait a little longer.”

She lifted her head and, gingerly, put a hand on his forearm, where it hung by his side. His biceps were big and hard. They hadn’t been before. His shoulders were broader, and his hair, as brown as milk chocolate, was longer than she’d ever seen it. She liked it long. It would be a shame when he had to cut it again to return to his job as a cop. If he was able to return to his job as a cop.

She thought about saying so, then realized she’d been standing there with her hand on his biceps for a good minute and a half, in silence.

“I want to help you get through this,” she said. “I want to help however I can.”

“There’s nothing you can do.”

“You know better.” She lowered her hand, reluctantly, but her eyes replaced it. Damn, he’d beefed up. “God, don’t you remember what a kick-ass pair of amateur detectives we were?” she asked, forcing her eyes to move upward and lock with his.

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about the past.”

She sighed deeply. “I don’t care how difficult you try to make this, Bryan. I’m staying, and I’m going to try to help.”

“That’s kind of a switch from ‘Beth wouldn’t take no for an answer,’ isn’t it?”

“Oh, come on. I would have come whether she asked me to or not, once I knew what was going on with you. Don’t pretend you don’t know me well enough to know that.”

“I’m not sure I know you at all anymore.”

She probed his eyes, looking for the emotion behind the words. Was it just anger, or was there also hurt, frustration, even worry? Or maybe a combination of all of the above? He must be going out of his mind with everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. And yet she resented him snapping at the friend who had come all the way across the country to help him. “You going to be an asshole the whole time I’m here, then?”

“Probably.”

“Well, just so I know up front. Look, I want to take a shower before dinner, so—”

“Right. Go for it. I’m out of here.”

He turned to go, but she went after him, grabbed his shoulder to turn him around, and then jerked her hand away as if the contact burned. Because it had. His shoulder was even more changed than his biceps. Big and hard, and so very different from her memories of him.

“What do you mean, you’re out of here? You’re staying for dinner, aren’t you?”

He met her eyes, and his face, harsh before, softened just a little. She had to wonder if that touch, no matter how brief, had hit him the way it had hit her. Like a fingertip to bathwater that was way too hot, making you pull it back fast and hiss through your teeth. Making your nerves jump from lazy complacence to screaming awareness.

He sighed and said, “Yeah, I’m staying. And I’ll try not to be an asshole the entire time.”

He almost smiled.

She almost returned it.

“That’s good,” she said. “Because I want to know everything, Bryan. Everything that happened, everything you can remember, including the stuff you haven’t told Josh or the police or your best friend.” She tightened her lips, thinking that she used to be his best friend. Wondering who filled that role today. And why the very thought was like a knife in her chest.

He studied her for a long moment, and slowly something changed in his face. It was as if he were thinking of something troubling, something he hadn’t thought of before. He reached out, and to her utter surprise, he ran his fingertips from the crown of her head down over her hair, to where it hit her shoulder. “Dawn, I don’t know how safe it is for you to get too close to this. Or to me. Hell, I don’t know if it’s even safe for you to be here right now.”

She frowned. “Why?”

Beth called his name from downstairs, and he hesitated, then nodded as if making a decision. “There’s a lot to this you don’t know. But I’ll fill you in after dinner, okay?”

“Okay.” She could have sagged in relief just then. Because for that moment he had seemed like the old Bryan. It had felt as if nothing had changed between them. But only for a moment. As soon as she smiled up at him, she saw the door behind his eyes slam closed. The moment was gone, and he was tense and defensive again.

Beth called again, saying, “Nick’s on the phone, Bryan.”

“Coming,” he called. Then he lifted a hand, a half wave that might have started out as something else—a touch, maybe—before morphing into the kind of halfhearted wave strangers offered one another. “See you at dinner, Dawn.”

She nodded and watched him go, then closed her bedroom door, leaned her head briefly against it and wondered why her heart was contracting into a tiny stonelike lump in her chest and her throat had tightened to the point where it was hard even to breathe.

She was feeling too much. Way too much. And way too soon. But at least she’d forgotten to worry about the dead.

Odd that they hadn’t bothered her yet. She wondered why, then decided it was best to just count her blessings, as she headed for the shower.

Bryan really hadn’t intended to be a jerk. But damn, there was something infuriating about being in the same room with Dawn, and he didn’t think it was due to stress over being a murder suspect.

Now she sat across the dining room table from him, nibbling halfheartedly on her pot roast. She seemed to be ignoring the mouthwatering scent wafting from her plate to her nose. She barely touched the gravy-soaked vegetables and potatoes. She looked as if her mind were entirely elsewhere.

For the first time Bryan wondered if she was seeing someone back on the West Coast. God, what if she was so touchy simply because she missed her lover?

Suddenly he couldn’t stand the smell of the food, much less eat it. He started to push himself away from the table.

“It’s just us here now, Bryan,” Josh said, finally breaking the tense silence that filled the dining room as surely as the aroma of Beth’s continuously simmering potpourri. “You can tell us everything. It’s not going any further.”

Bryan felt the bottom fall out of his stomach at his father’s words. “Tell you everything? What, exactly, is it you think I’m not telling you?”

Josh’s eyes widened, and he shook his head hard. “No, no—”

“God, Dad, tell me you don’t think—”

“I don’t think you did it! I know you didn’t do it, son. That’s not even within the realm of possibility. Come on, Bryan. I know you.”

Bryan felt the sudden weight leave his shoulders a little as he let himself believe his father’s passionate declaration.

“I just meant,” Josh went on, “that you can tell us everything that happened. Everything you remember. Things your lawyer wouldn’t let you tell your colleagues.”

Bryan lifted a brow. “Are you wearing a wire or something?”

Dead silence fell on them like a shroud. Around the table, every eye was glued to Bryan, every expression mortified, especially Dawn’s. Then Bryan shook his head, sighed and said, “I was kidding, Dad.”

“Damn, Bry, this is no time for humor.” But Josh sighed his relief all the same.

“Guess not. But you’re all so damn glum.” Bryan looked around the table, including Dawn in the observation. “Look, I haven’t been convicted yet. Hell, I haven’t even been charged. And I’m not going to be. I have faith in the system.”

Josh stabbed a chunk of meat with his fork. “Yeah, well, I’ve spent most of my life in the system, and I’m not so confident in it that I’m willing to trust my son to it.” He set the fork down, meat still attached, and tossed his cloth napkin onto the table in front of him. “Look, Bry, the only way to ensure you don’t end up being arrested and charged is for us to find out who did this ourselves. And to do that, we need a place to start. The more you can remember, the better off we’ll be.”

Bryan nodded slowly. His father knew his shit. He’d spent years as an agent with the DEA. “I know, I know. But that’s just it. I don’t remember a damn thing. There was the party the night before. Things were getting…a little rowdy, I guess. But everyone seemed to be having a good time. I drank. A lot. More than I normally would have, though I didn’t think I was going overboard all that much.”

Josh’s head came up. “Did they ask you for a blood sample when they questioned you?”

“Yeah. Freaking lawyer didn’t want me to agree to it. But I overruled him. Hell, I’d already admitted to being drunk, so it wasn’t going to hurt to have them know the blood alcohol level. And as for DNA, it was my house. My DNA’s all over it. So I gave it.”

“Good,” Josh said with a firm nod. “So there was the party. And you were drinking. And…?”

“And that’s it. I woke up on the bathroom floor. The house was empty, but I didn’t remember when everyone left. I felt like hell, decided to go back to bed to sleep it off, dragged my ass into the bedroom and found Bette lying there, already cold.”

“I’m so sorry, Bryan,” Dawn whispered.

It wasn’t her words that hit home in his brain. It was the way she reached across the table and gripped his forearm. He looked up fast, met her eyes as his skin sizzled beneath her palm.

“I’ve been so focused on the fact that you’re a suspect in this, I haven’t told you how sorry I am that you lost someone you cared about.”

Her eyes backed up every word. She really meant it. He could only nod and grunt his thanks. She took her hand away, and he wanted it back. Touching her—being touched by her—was something he’d missed more than he’d realized until now.

“I mean it,” she said.

“I know you do,” he replied.

“Nick tell you what he told me on the phone?” Josh asked.

“There was whiskey in Bette’s throat, and in her lungs,” Bryan said softly. “Glasgow Gold, he said.”

“Yeah. Maybe you don’t know what that means, but—”

“I know what it means,” Bryan said, and he met his father’s eyes.

Josh’s face fell.

“What does it mean?” Dawn asked.

“How do you know?” Josh whispered, as if she hadn’t even spoken.

Bryan knew she was confused, but he had to get this out to his father now. There was no point in doing less than laying his cards on the table where his family was concerned. He didn’t want tidbits of information surfacing later on and shaking their belief in him. With a deep sigh, he said, “Two weeks ago, I signed out all the files on the Nightcap Strangler case.”

Dawn dropped her fork. “Nightcap Strangler? Bryan, that sounds like the name of some kind of…of a serial killer or something.”

“It is,” he said. “Or was.”

She blinked. “What the hell is going on?”

Bryan set down his silverware. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“Like that Bette was killed by a serial killer, you mean? And that now they think it might be you? A serial killer? God, Bryan!”

“It’s even more complicated than that. The Nightcap Strangler was a man named Johnny Lee Jackson. He was arrested sixteen years ago, and there hasn’t been a killing fitting his M.O. since. He died in prison just last month. I think this has to be a copycat crime.”

“But why?” Dawn asked. “Why would this…this copycat want to kill your girlfriend, in your bed, while you were sleeping in the next room?”

“I don’t know why.”

“Yes, you do,” she accused. “Bryan, what were you doing with those files? The timing of this, of you going through those old files, that can’t be a coincidence. The police certainly aren’t going to see it as one. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing.”

Dawn noted, though, that Beth and Josh were looking at him with the very same questions in their eyes. Oh, none of them believed Bryan was capable of murder, but there was clearly some kind of link between him and those crimes—or this criminal.

And Dawn had the feeling he knew what it was.

“I think this is all about Nick,” he said, confirming her belief.

Josh nodded as if he understood, while Beth kept staring at him, waiting for further clarification.

“Nick?” Dawn asked. “The Nick?”

“Nick Di Marco,” Bryan said. “He was one of my professors back in college, my mentor. We’re tight. Hell, I trust him more than anyone in the world, except maybe my dad. Anyway, he’s the cop who solved the Nightcap Strangler case sixteen years ago, before he retired from the force and took up teaching.”

“I know,” Dawn said. “I’d forgotten what they called the killer, is all.” She’d heard all about Nick the supercop, and his book and his movie deal, from Beth. If she’d ever actually lived in Blackberry, she would probably have heard about him far sooner. He was the nearby town of Shadow Falls’s version of a living legend.

“I think Bette was chosen because of her connection to me and my connection to Nick,” Bryan said. “Someone is trying to set me up, but I think they’re also trying to get to him, somehow, through me. But whoever it is, it’s not the Nightcap Strangler. Probably just some lunatic with an obsession or a bad case of hero worship. A wannabe.”

“A wannabe who somehow got information only known by the police?” Josh asked.

“And by Nightcap himself,” Bryan said.

“He could have told someone, a friend, a relative—even a cell mate.”

“Do you think this copycat will kill again?” Beth asked softly.

“Oh, he’ll kill again,” said a new voice from just beyond the screen door off the foyer. They all turned, and the man standing there went on. “I just hope Bryan here is safely behind bars or surrounded by cops when he does.” He grinned, and every part of his face joined in on the smile. “Can’t get a better alibi than that now, can you?”