by Kay Hooper
“Was she raped?” Kane asked, a harsh note creeping into his voice.
“We’ll know after the autopsy.”
Kane turned back to stare out the window once again.
Faith saw Bishop send Richardson a quick, questioning look, saw the detective nod almost imperceptibly, and a wave of sickness washed over her. Richardson was sure of the rape even if he wasn’t willing to tell Kane.
Tim Daniels, who had been silent until then, asked, “Anything where she was found that might help us catch the bastards who did it?”
“Very little at the scene, though we did get a few fibers from her clothing. The forensics lab should be able to tell us more in a day or two, if there’s anything to tell. We’ve got people canvassing the area in case anybody saw or heard anything suspicious in the last few days, but I’m not expecting results. That area is pretty deserted, and anybody who was around would have been carefully minding his own business.”
Faith spoke up for the first time, asking quietly, “What about the dog bites?”
Richardson frowned. “How did you know she’d been bitten by a dog?”
“She dreamed it,” Kane said.
Faith winced at the bitter note in his voice but didn’t blame him for his hostility. A lot of help her “dreams” had been; last night and even this morning, she had believed Dinah was still alive. She knew only too well her belief had encouraged Kane’s, had convinced him they could find Dinah alive if not unharmed.
“What else did you dream?” Richardson asked, with none of the skepticism she’d expected.
“Tell him,” Bishop instructed.
So she did, relating as many details of the flashes and dreams as she could recall, including the dog attack. But she didn’t mention the voice in her head, which had probably just been her subconscious anyway.…
Richardson looked more grim than before. “So you and Dinah were investigating something on your own, and whatever it was got her killed.”
Holding her voice steady, Faith said, “That’s what we think. Unfortunately, I can’t remember whatever it was. And all I really got from these—these flashes of mine was that whoever had Dinah wanted something they thought she—or we—had.”
Then she added, “I think I took whatever it is, but I have no idea what I did with it—or even where I found it. But it must be important, because they—they tortured Dinah trying to make her tell them where it was.”
Kane moved almost convulsively but didn’t turn. Bishop, his gaze on his friend, said to Richardson, “All this has to tie together. Did you find out anything about who took a shot at Faith night before last?”
Was it only then, only night before last? Faith felt as though years had passed.
“The apartment directly across from here is vacant. The door was found unlocked, and there were indications that someone had been using the place at least for a few hours. From that balcony, it would have been a fairly easy shot, even in a storm. Whether they aimed at a lighted window or actually at Faith, I can’t say for certain.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be a security building?”
“Supposed to be. You’d never know it, though. The fire door on the ground floor was unlocked. In fact, the wind from the storm had practically blown it off its hinges. As far as I can tell, anybody could have gotten inside and up to that apartment.” Richardson sighed heavily. “And I figure we’ve got about another hour before the news breaks that Dinah’s body was found. We sealed up the scene fairly well, but there were news crews on to it about the time I left. It’ll make the noon news, I’d say.”
“And we’ll have a media circus,” Bishop said.
“Bound to.” The detective looked at Kane. “That million-dollar bounty caught their interest, and now that there’s no chance of earning it—”
Kane turned from the window with more animation than he’d yet shown. “There’s every chance of earning it. I’ll pay every dime to anyone who points the way to the men who held Dinah captive.” His voice was sharp.
Richardson frowned. “I hope you don’t mean to word the announcement that way, Kane. You can’t reward someone for just pointing the way. They have to provide concrete evidence we can use in court.”
“Evidence leading to the arrest and conviction,” Bishop murmured.
“It’s my money,” Kane said. “I’ll promise it to anyone I goddamn please.”
Very polite now, Richardson said, “That could be construed as reckless endangerment. These bastards have shown all too clearly they’ll do their best to remove anyone who gets in their way. Would you put someone else in the line of fire, Kane?”
Kane didn’t reply, and the hard expression on his face didn’t change. He said again, “I want to see Dinah.”
“That isn’t a good idea.”
“I want to see her.”
“Kane—”
“Are you going to take me down there, or do I have to call the chief of police?”
Richardson glanced at Bishop, but the agent showed no inclination to protest what was such an obviously bad idea. The detective sighed again. “Okay, okay, I’ll take you. Grab a jacket and we’ll go now, before the media camps out on your doorstep.”
Kane left the room.
Richardson glared at Bishop. “You were a lot of help.”
“He needs to see her.”
“Bishop, do you have any idea what she looks like?”
The agent nodded, his expression bleak. “A pretty good idea, yeah. But he needs to see her.”
“Shit. Look, call down to the morgue and tell Conners we’re on our way. Tell him to—to do what he can to make her look human.”
Faith was numb, but not even that could protect her from the horrible image of Dinah’s damaged body. A sound of pain escaped her, and she closed her eyes for a moment.
Richardson seemed about to apologize, then threw up his hands and went to meet Kane by the front door.
Kane didn’t say goodbye.
After the door closed behind them, the silence stretched for several minutes, then Faith said, “Why didn’t you stop him? You could have if you’d tried. Why didn’t you?”
Bishop’s face was set, the scar down his cheek white and angry-looking. “You heard me. He needs to see her.”
“Why? Why does he have to have that horrible memory of her forever?”
“Because her death won’t be real to him until he sees her lying lifeless and mangled on a slab,” Bishop answered, the words brutal but his voice very soft. “The first stage of grief is denial. Until he gets past that, he can’t go on.”
Part of Faith understood, but another part wanted to spare Kane. She nodded and tried to think about something else. “Were you nearby when Richardson called you? I didn’t think you’d come back to Atlanta yet.”
“I hadn’t. I was in Tennessee.”
When he didn’t explain, Faith said, “I guess you caught a fast plane.”
“Fast enough.”
Faith gave up. “Look, I—I need to go to Haven House. They knew Dinah. They should hear about it from someone before they see it on the news. But I promised Kane I wouldn’t go anywhere unescorted, especially after the shooting. Tim, would you—”
“Of course,” the private investigator answered.
She looked at Bishop. “When Kane gets back … I don’t think he should be here alone. Do you?”
“No more than he already is,” Bishop said bleakly.
Unlike several of the adults in the shelter, Katie didn’t cry when Faith told her about Dinah. Instead, the solemn little girl retreated to the music room and began picking her way through one of the songs Faith had brought her to learn.
“Will she be all right?” Faith asked Karen.
“I don’t know,” the director said wearily. “She wasn’t in great shape before, especially since she saw her bastard of a father take a baseball bat to her mother. He was crazy enough this time to go after Andrea in a mall, of all places, so at least he’s locked up, but Katie saw
more than ever before and she’s been awfully quiet since then.” Karen frowned. “She talked more to you when you were here Sunday than she has to anybody else since it happened.”
Faith had intended to stay only long enough to break the news about Dinah; she was worried about Kane and wanted to get back to his apartment. But now she was worried about Katie as well and couldn’t leave without trying to make sure the little girl was all right.
“Hey, kiddo.” She sat down on the bench beside Katie. “Do you like the new music?”
Katie nodded and looked up at Faith gravely. “You didn’t forget. Thank you.”
“Of course I didn’t forget.” Faith hesitated. “I thought you might want to talk about Dinah.”
“Why? She’s dead, that’s what you told us.”
Faith wasn’t deceived by the callous words; she had seen Katie’s bottom lip quiver. “When people die,” she said carefully, “we keep them alive inside us. By thinking about them. Talking about them. I just wanted you to know it’s okay to do that. You can talk to Karen, and you can talk to me.”
Katie looked down at the piano as she picked out the first few notes of “Beautiful Dreamer.” After a moment, she said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course you can, kiddo.”
“Can you—can you talk to Dinah now? In your head, the way you used to could?”
Out of the mouths of babes.
Oh, God, can I? Can I talk to her?
“No,” Faith said, “not that way.” It was true, wasn’t it? If nothing else was true, at least it was true that nothing was the way it had been before.
“I just wondered,” Katie mumbled.
Guessing, Faith said, “Is there something you wanted to tell Dinah? Something you wanted to ask her? Is that it?”
“No. Except …”
“Except what?”
“Nothing. I want to practice now.”
Faith watched that little face close up and felt frustrated and anxious. But her instincts told her not to force the issue, so she just said she’d see Katie later and quietly went away.
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Karen reassured her in the foyer a few minutes later. “She probably just needs time. And her mama out of the hospital, of course.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Faith gave her the number at Kane’s apartment and said, “Call me if—if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“Sure. Try not to worry, Faith.”
That, Faith thought, was easier said than done. Far easier.
“Of course they caught him coming out of the morgue,” Bishop said savagely, watching the TV.
As before, microphones were shoved in front of Kane and questions shouted at him, but this time he wore the look of a man barely conscious of those around him—until one reporter demanded to know how he’d felt upon learning of the brutal murder of his fiancée.
Kane gave the reporter a stare of such incredulity that the others were silenced, and into that silence he spoke with cold precision.
“The million-dollar reward I offered for information leading to Dinah’s safe return will now be paid to the person or persons providing information that leads me to her killers.”
“That’s torn it,” Bishop said softly.
“Can’t Richardson stop him?” Faith asked.
“Obviously not.”
The detective was speaking urgently into Kane’s ear, but he was totally ignored. Kane repeated his offer, allowing the words to fall like separate chips of ice, and only after he was absolutely sure that every reporter had written down or taped his offer did he allow Richardson to hustle him into a car.
When the TV reporter began breathlessly to relate the gruesome facts of the discovery of Dinah’s body, Bishop muted the set and looked at Faith. “Here we go,” he said.
“What do you expect to happen?”
“A feeding frenzy. Every reporter in town will be trying to solve the murder, to say nothing of way too many private investigators and amateur sleuths.”
“Couldn’t that be good? I mean, with so many trying …”
“It’ll just muddy the water. And Richardson wasn’t kidding when he warned Kane he could be charged with reckless endangerment if somebody gets hurt or killed trying to earn that reward.”
“He isn’t thinking clearly.”
“No. And he’ll regret it later. But for now—”
“The damage is done?”
“I’m afraid so. Worst of all, Dinah’s killers could be spooked into taking actions they might not otherwise have taken.”
“They won’t go after Kane?”
“Probably not. There’s a very bright spotlight on him right now.” Bishop looked at her steadily. “But they could very well go after you. With Dinah gone, you’re the key, Faith.”
“A key with no memory.”
“If I were them,” he said, “with a city full of people trying to figure out who I am, and a million-dollar bounty on my head, I wouldn’t take any chances by presuming the validity of amnesia.”
“No,” Faith said reluctantly. “Neither would I.”
It was called the witching hour, Faith knew. Three A.M., when all the world seemed quiet and still, and nothing was lonelier to listen to than the beating of your own heart.
Except maybe “Moonlight Sonata.”
He was playing it so quietly it wouldn’t have awakened her if she had been asleep. But she hadn’t been. She’d lain there in his bed for hours, staring at the ceiling, and soon after midnight he had begun playing.
The soft sound got into her head somehow, throbbed inside her like the echo of feelings, the wordless rendering of instincts. It made her heart ache.
She thought he was grieving with the music, allowing the notes to express the pain and longing he couldn’t yet release in any other way.
He had returned to the apartment so controlled and withdrawn there had been no way to reach him, to touch him, even if Faith had dared try.
She hadn’t dared.
To her he was formal, indifferent. She might have been a total stranger, a guest he suffered in his home and his life out of courtesy and nothing else. More than once, she had the impression he didn’t even see her when he looked at her.
And now it was the witching hour, and Faith lay in the bed in which he had coolly insisted she continue to sleep, listening to him play the piano with such grinding emotion she wanted to cry.
She turned over and pulled the pillow around her ears, trying to shut out the aching sound, but even the muffled notes had the power to hurt her. She didn’t want to hear them, didn’t want to listen to his pain and grief.
She wondered if Dinah had known how lucky she was.
Had she reveled in Kane’s love, or had it been a burden to her because she had known they would have no future together? The scenes Faith had witnessed between them, those dreams and flashes of knowledge, had been playful and sexy and filled with intimacy, but had they been filled with love? She didn’t know. Couldn’t know.
And couldn’t ask, not now …
The beach was wonderfully peaceful and soothing, as it always was. It fed her soul. The waves were like music, or what Dinah imagined music must sound like to people who enjoyed it, rhythmic, like a pulse, and altogether pleasant.
The sand was warm beneath her bare feet, damp at first, then wet as the waves lapped around her. She walked and walked.
There was a man up ahead, a familiar figure, and she smiled when she saw him. If she walked a bit faster, she could catch up to him.
But no matter how fast she walked, he remained the same distance ahead of her. She began to run. Her heart pounded and her breath came raggedly, and still he was distant and out of her reach.
Beyond her ability to touch.
She finally stopped running and paused to catch her breath, and when she did she was puzzled to find that the beach was gone. She could still hear the waves, the rhythmic pulsing that was so soothing, but now she was at the construction site where Kane’s
building was going up.
Only it wasn’t quite right somehow.
She walked around the steel skeleton to the back, and frowned because on this side it was a solid office building, windows gleaming in the sunlight. That was very odd, she thought. Only half a building. Why would Kane build half a building?
“He must have a reason,” she said aloud.
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than she was in her apartment, and she walked through it curiously, looking at familiar things, touching them. But everything was curiously insubstantial, and she was puzzled again.
“You’re dead,” Faith told her.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You are.”
Dinah shook her head and continued through the apartment, searching now, her expression determined. “I’ll find it, and then everything will be all right again,” she said.
“But you’re dead,” Faith insisted, miserable. “It’s too late, because you’re dead.”
“When I find it, I won’t be dead anymore,” Dinah explained reasonably.
“How do you know that?”
“I just know, that’s all. Why are you here?”
“I tried to reach you,” Faith explained, following her. “I tried and tried. But it was so dark, and all I could hear was the water.”
“You’re reaching me now.”
“Yes, but I think it’s because you’re dead.”
“How you do harp on that,” Dinah said, shaking her head.
“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. What is it you’re looking for, anyway?”
“The MacGuffin, I think somebody called it.”
“That’s what we’re looking for.”
“Yes, I know. But you’re looking in the wrong place.”
“Then tell me where to look.”
Dinah made a sound of exasperation. “If I did, it wouldn’t be a treasure hunt, now would it?”
