Night Hunter
Page 3
Yeah, she definitely found him interesting. And vice versa. If any of his college professors had looked like Gillian Sayers, Nick might've attended class a whole lot more.
Celeste breezed into the office, her plastic smile locked in place. She'd just come from the restroom where she'd wiped the shine from her nose, fluffed the limp from her hair, and yanked the crowbar from her ass. "We ready?"
"Just about," Nick singsonged. "Open the blinds, would you? We could use some more light."
Celeste racheted her plastic smile up a notch. She hated assisting him and made no bones about it. Nick cracked a grin. Whatever hell she'd put him through later for his insubordination was so worth seeing her reduced to performing menial labor.
The blinds swished, rattled, and clacked, absorbing the brunt of Celeste's foul mood. Midafternoon sunlight poured into the office, casting a golden glow on everything it touched, including Gillian.
Nick's breath caught, lodged, and held.
The camera could be a harsh critic. Unkind and unforgiving. Especially in bright light. But it loved Gillian, enhancing her natural beauty rather than magnifying her flaws, of which, from what Nick could see, she had none.
Celeste sat in the visitor chair next to him and fiddled with her wireless microphone. She'd ask the majority of her questions off camera. After the interview, she and Nick would film a segment on the front steps of the building and toss in a few shots from around campus. Back at the station, he and the crew would integrate clips from previous stories and then edit everything together into a mildly informative and definitely sensationalized special-edition piece.
"Shall we begin, Professor Sayers?" Celeste crossed her legs, leaned back, and got into the zone, her features reflecting her changed state of mind.
"Yes, I'm ready."
"Five, four, three, two ... ," Nick cued and started rolling.
In his viewfinder, Gillian sat at her desk, her folded hands in front of her, her nameplate in the lower right of the picture. The cool, collected demeanor she presented to the camera didn't quite mask her nervousness. A whispery rat-tat-tat from a bouncing leg beneath her desk gave her away.
"We're here with Dr. Sayers, Professor of Psychology at ArizonaStateUniversity," Celeste said, then went on to discuss Gillian's book, which enjoyed something of a local following "among young people. "You have a section, Dr. Sayers," Celeste continued, "about a winged creature that preys on humans. This creature, so the urban legend goes, appears every twenty-five years for only a few weeks, after which it disappears without a trace."
Celeste's normally professional tone contained the barest hint of you-can't-possibly-expect-me-to-believethis-bullshit.
If only she knew the half of it.
"That's correct, yes." Gillian's leg bounced faster and harder.
"You describe murder victims and scenes which, on the surface, appear similar in nature to the elderly woman killed last night. Do you think there's a connection?"
"Are you asking me if creatures that prey on human flesh really do exist?"
Nick had to hand it to Gillian. Her deflection was deftly executed.
"Let me rephrase," Celeste said with practiced patience. She didn't like interviewees who gave as good as they got. "How much credence do you put in the urban legends about these winged creatures of the night?"
"Most legends, from Greek mythology to the Lost Dutchman's Mine to Santa Claus, have at least some basis in fact."
"What are the facts regarding these creatures?"
"Not many. Only that there have been at least thirty-two unexplained murders in the past hundred and fifty years, all occurring in downtown Phoenix within a one-mile radius, all involving flesh and organs ripped from the victim's body, and all happening exactly a quarter century apart." Gillian's knee went still, and she stared straight into the camera. "From what I viewed on your newscast earlier today, there is indeed a similarity between the previous unexplained murders and the elderly woman's death."
"Granted, Doctor, a series of unexplained murders are certainly noteworthy, but do you have anything that specifically ties these murders to the creatures?"
Nick muttered an oath under his breath. Celeste was up to something. He quickly switched camera positions and caught her tilting her head in inquiry.
Gillian tilted her head right back at Celeste. "Eyewitness reports, diary entries, stories passed down from one generation to the next, unsubstantiated rumors, and the disjointed ramblings of an old man at the West Valley Mental Health Care Facility."
"Any photographs? Videos? Home movies?"
"No."
"All these years and no one has ever managed to snap so much as a Polaroid of these creatures?"
Gillian's mouth twitched slightly. "Unfortunately not."
"I see," Celeste said, her catlike smile one of satisfaction.
Celeste was obviously attempting to make Gillian appear like a nutty professor rather than a respected, albeit unconventional, academian. Yet one more mark against his coworker..
"There are also references to the creatures in various Native American folklore," Gillian added.
"Are you referring to the Wendigo?"
If Celeste thought to show off, her plan fell flat.
"The creatures of Phoenix urban legends are nothing like the Wendigos. To start with, the Phoenix creatures have the ability to fly, though not to great heights, and are silent predators. The Wendigos of Native American folklore are wingless and reputed to make loud noises, crashing through brush and foliage. Also, Wendigos are forest dwellers. Their habitat stretches across a large number of states. The creatures I refer to in my book are city dwellers, indigenous to downtown Phoenix. A very small area of downtown Phoenix." Gillian pointed a finger in the air as if she just remembered something. "Oh, and they don't appear as characters on any of those vampire-slayer, witch-sisters, or demon-hunter TV shows."
The notoriously unflappable Celeste chewed her bottom lip.
Interviewee one, reporter zero, thought Nick.
Gillian sighed. She'd clearly reached her limit of fun and games for one day. "I didn't make up the urban legends, Ms. Todd. I simply wrote a book on the psychology behind them. And though I don't claim the creatures are real, there are those who would beg to differ."
She's seen one.
The knowledge that Gillian had witnessed a creature firsthand came to Nick with such certainty, his fingers clenched, causing the camera to jiggle.
He should have recognized the haunted look in her eyes. It was the same one he'd seen reflected in the mirror twenty-five years ago when Cadamus's predecessor had killed Nick's family in front of him-and would have killed him, too, if not for a fortunate turn of events.
Suddenly, everything Nick had read or heard about Gillian's childhood took on new meaning, including what her father had told Nick about her. But William Sayers, it now appeared, hadn't been entirely honest when Nick had visited him in Florence Prison.
Why?
While Celeste asked a few closing questions, Nick played out an alternate scenario in his head, one where Gillian's present occupation and keen interest in the urban legends stemmed from her actually seeing the creature kill her mother and not what her father had told her.
It was possible.
No, likely.
And if true, it would fill in a lot of the missing pieces.
"Thank you, Dr. Sayers, for agreeing to see us on such short notice." Celeste extended her hand across the desk to Gillian, who graciously accepted it.
"When will this be aired?"
"Tonight, I'd say." Celeste turned to Nick for confirmation. "The nine o'clock edition. That is, if we use it."
"We'll use it," Nick said, turning off the camera. And he'd make damn sure they edited the piece in such a way as to compliment Gillian.
When he glanced up, it was to find Gillian staring at him, her lips parted. The hand at her throat slowly uncurled, and her fingers toyed with the intricate gold chain circling her slender neck.
Nick went suddenly still as a surge of desire shot through him, white hot and intense and not entirely unexpected. He'd been aware of Gillian for years. Aware, hell, he'd studied her closely. She was a beautiful woman. It was natural for him to feel an attraction.
But the emotion gripping Nick at that moment went way beyond attraction. On his end, anyway. Whatever Gillian was feeling, she didn't let on.
What he wouldn't give for a chance to shake up the unshakable Dr. Gillian Sayers.
Several wordless seconds ticked by during which Nick's mind wandered and explored the many tantalizing possibilities, all of which involved tangled bedsheets and lots of naked skin.
"You ready?" Celeste stood by the door.
"Ah..." Nick nearly bit his tongue in two. "Not quite." Leaving wasn't an option, not while he sported the granddaddy of all hard-ons.
"Nick." Celeste dragged his name out over three syllables and marched toward the door.
"Yeah, coming." He cleared his throat and rose on embarrassingly unsteady legs. "Thanks, Doc," he croaked and cradled his camera in the crook of his arm.
Busy replacing the desk accessories she'd removed earlier, Gillian lifted her head and gave him a brief nod. "Good-bye, Mr. Blackwater."
Obviously, it hadn't been as good for her as it'd been for him.
Oh, well. Maybe afer he killed Cadamus and things settled down a bit, he could change that.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gillian cruised past the TV-7 station just as a parking space became available. Praising her good fortune, she pulled in, shut off the ignition, fed the meter four quarters, then climbed back in her car to wait for Nick.
Double-checking the car door locks, she slouched deeper into her seat and lowered her cap to cover her face. She wasn't as much afraid of being spotted by Nick as leery of the occasional pedestrian passing by. The station might be located in one of the better downtown neighborhoods, but there were still enough weirdos, gang members, and disreputable characters roaming the streets to give her a case of the willies.
This is no place for a woman alone at night.
The idea that had seemed so good an hour ago now struck her as ludicrous. Nick had no reason to help her. He didn't know her, hadn't met her before today, and she hadn't exactly charmed him during the interview.
However, while he was readying to leave, she'd felt a connection to him she couldn't explain. A very sexually charged connection that she suspected went both ways. It had left her reeling long afterward and prompted her to decide against enlisting his aid in finding the creature. What she needed was a partner, a collaborator, a talented journalist with a penchant for unearthing great stories. Not a marginally cocky, though admittedly good-looking, camera jockey whose brash stare had sent small shivers of awareness dancing along her spine.
Watching the nine P .m. newscast had changed her mind.
Despite Celeste Todd's attempts to discredit Gillian, the segment had been pieced together to present Gillian as a knowledgeable authority on urban legends and Celeste Todd as a professional reporter concerned with uncovering the truth about the old woman's murder. Gillian credited Nick and his editing skills for sparing her reputation.
So, in a roundabout way, he'd already come to her rescue once. He might be willing to help her again.
Immediately after the interview, she'd booted up her home computer and tried to find his address. Forty-five minutes later, she resorted to the phone book and then dialed information. Every avenue she attempted ended with the same disappointing results.
Trying a different route, she'd called the TV-7 station. The night operator told her Nick was still there but unavailable, and forwarded Gillian to his voice mail. She hung up without leaving a message, threw on some old clothes, and jumped in her car. The questions she had for Nick needed to be asked in person.
Now, sitting in her car, waiting for Nick to get off work, Gillian began to rethink her impulsiveness. Her actions smacked too much of a third-rate private investigator trailing an adulterous spouse. Then again, she reminded herself, desperate people such as herself did impulsive things-like approaching a virtual stranger and asking for his help.
Her nagging inner voice shut up the second Nick stepped outside, a spring to his step. He was clearly in a hurry. Gillian fumbled with the key, finally started the car, and shoved the transmission into reverse.
Rather than head : to the nearby parking garage, Nick set out on foot in the opposite direction.
"What the ... ?"
Gillian leapt out of her car, her blood pumping like a freight train, fed the meter a few more quarters, and took off after Nick.
Careful to maintain a discrete distance, she followed him three blocks to a small strip center housing several shops and a sports bar, which, judging by the raucous crowd and blaring wide-screen TVs on every wall, was a favorite with baseball fans.
He didn't go in.
Hugging the side of the building, Nick went around back and climbed a set of stairs to a thirdstory exterior walkway. Gillian ducked behind a bus stop shelter. From her hiding place, she watched him enter what appeared to be an apartment.
A light came on. Seconds later another light came on in a different room. His bedroom? Gillian glanced at her watch. Ten twenty-three. Late, yes, but he hadn't yet gone to bed. She could still go up there and knock on his door. It seemed absurd to have come all this way, gone through all the trouble of finding him, then chicken out.
Odd, she thought, glancing around and getting her bearings, he didn't live far from her. They'd walked the almost half mile from the TV station to his apartment. Her condo was a half mile north of here. The new high-rise had replaced the low-income housing where Gillian had lived as a child-the same place her mother had been killed.
After her father's sentencing hearing, Gillian entered the foster care system and left the inner city behind, only to return twenty-one years later when she landed a teaching position at ArizonaStateUniversity. Her colleagues called her, crazy for buying a condo so far from campus. They didn't understand Gillian's compulsion to be at the center of the creature's domain, and she had no intention of telling them.
Would Nick understand? Or would he laugh in her face and tell her to start seeing a psychologist rather than be one?
Gut instinct told her he'd at least listen to her.
A young man joined her at the bus stop. His creepy stare was all the incentive Gillian needed. She stuck her hand in her purse, wrapped her fingers around the can of Mace she always carried, and headed toward the strip center. A second look confirmed the young man wasn't following her, and she breathed a tad easier.
At the unexpected sight of Nick coming back down the stairs, she lost her nerve, panicked, and scurried toward the sports bar, blending in with a group of exiting patrons.
"Idiot," she muttered, then called herself a few more choice names when he strolled past the bus stop shelter where only a minute before she'd been standing.
Deciding she was through playing amateur detective for the night, Gillian bumped past a tipsy couple arguing about which one of them was more fit to drive home and struck out again-not after Nick this time, but back to her car.
The same direction Nick was taking on his latenight stroll.
He carried a leather bag over his shoulder, she noticed, and had changed clothes. The baggy jeans and holey T-shirt he wore to the interview had been replaced with not-so-baggy black jeans and a longsleeved black shirt that molded to muscled shoulders, torso, and arms suitable for the cover of a fitness magazine. There was also something different about the manner in which he carried himself. Still in a hurry, he moved with the grace and agility of a well-trained athlete.
This Nick was completely different from the one who'd come to Gillian's office. Observing his strong, confident strides, her long-dormant appreciation of the opposite sex came instantly awake. As some of her female students would say, Nick Blackwater was a hottie, and Gillian would have to be blind or dead not to respond.
They were headed back toward the TV station.
Gillian periodically jogged to keep up with Nick, though why she bothered escaped her since she'd abandoned the notion of talking to him, at least for tonight.
At the next intersection, he abruptly turned the corner onto First Street
. Wherever he was going, Gillian mused, it wasn't the station.
She approached the corner and stood. Continuing straight would take her to her car. In a matter of minutes she could be having her customary cup of herbal tea and grading the last batch of test papers before hitting the sack.
Yet she couldn't force her hand to reach out and press the "walk" button on the lamppost.
Realizing it made little sense, she started down First Street
, hot on Nick's heels.
He turned another corner, and Gillian's heart kicked into a higher gear. She knew his destination! The Forever in PeaceCemetery. When he made for the back end of the cemetery and not the front gate, her curiosity rocketed. Nick wasn't on assignment, leastwise not an official one. If he were, he'd have brought his camera.
Gillian quickened her steps only to lose him.
One second he was a hundred feet ahead of her, the next second, he vanished. She broke into a run. Whatever Nick was up to, she wanted to know. At the entrance to a service road behind the cemetery she skidded to a stop.
Nick was nowhere to be seen.
Where had he gone? She stared down the dirt service road, which was tucked between the cemetery and a municipal building the length of a city block. Overhead security lights from the municipal building, while dim, provided sufficient illumination for Gillian
to make out a person, even one dressed in black. Had he gone into the cemetery? She regarded the sevenfoot wrought-iron fence, the posts of which came to nasty-looking sharp points, and decided he had to be somewhere else.
Go home! her sensible inner voice advised. A woman was murdered here last night.