Killing Me Softly

“We’re going, anyway.” She tugged again. “If there are police there, we’ll just keep on driving. But if no one’s around, we can take the opportunity to get those files out of there.”

“No. I can’t let you tamper with evidence, Dawn. You’ll wind up sharing a cell with me.”

She looked up into his face, still gripping his hand. “I can think of worse things.” She almost wished she could bite back the words, but instead she averted her eyes, ignored the heat rushing into her face and went on. “Besides, we’re not just going for the files. We need to get inside the house. Into the bedroom.”

“Why the hell would you want—”

“Because the place where Bette died is probably the best place for me to try to make contact with her.”

“I’m not gonna let you do that for me, Beth.”

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.