Killing Me Softly

“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.