She remained where she was, her hand still on the doorknob, ready to slam it shut. “It’s Sunday.”
He bobbed his head. “Yes, it is. But their customer service line is opened twenty-four/seven. You have to go through several menus, but you wind up with a live person eventually. I’ve been through this before,” he added sheepishly. “Um, I knocked on some of the other doors.” He turned again, nodding at the various apartment doors, behind which all sorts of lives were being led. “But you’re the only one who answered.”
“Look, I’m expecting someone—”
“I’ll be quick,” he promised. “My mother lives with me and she’s not well. That phone is her only lifeline when I’m at work. If I leave tomorrow morning and the phone’s down, she’ll be helpless.”
He looked pathetic, she thought. Exactly what she would have thought a man past the age of twenty and living with his mother would look like. She didn’t remember seeing him in the building before, but then, he was one of those people she wouldn’t have noticed unless he was lying on the pavement next to her feet.
She supposed there was something to be said about a man who cared that much about his mother. At least he was better than a dirty, rotten, cheating husband who used his wife as an alibi every time he didn’t want to bother coming over.
“Your mother, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am.” His head bobbed again, like a subservient creature. “She’s eighty-five and in a wheel-chair.”
“All right, all right, you’re breaking my heart.” With a sigh, Stacy opened the door and stepped back. “Come on in. But make it quick,” she added.
Turning away, she didn’t see the smile that curved her neighbor’s lips.
“As quick as I can. I promise.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE INSTANT the apartment door slammed shut behind her, Charlotte Dow tossed down the dog leash and began stripping off her dripping clothes.
Taking this as a signal that a new game was afoot, her sixty-seven-pound jogging companion stopped shaking herself off and watering everything in sight. Instead, the German shepherd leaped up in front of her to catch one of the flying garments. Only sharp reflexes on Charley’s part kept mistress and pet from tangling together and falling on the floor.
“Dakota, if you ever hope to see another table scrap, you’d better get your hairy little butt out of my way. Now. I’m running late,” Charley said.
Ears down, a mournful look aimed directly at Charley’s heart, the German shepherd retreated to her favorite sunken-in spot on the worn gray sofa, still dragging her leash with her.
Charley could all but hear the violins playing in the background. She frowned. Great, more guilt, just what she needed.
Hopping first on one foot, then the other, Charley yanked off her running shoes. She needed new ones, she noted. The heels were beginning to wear.
She heard Dakota sigh. “I know, I know, it’s my own fault. I should have remembered you don’t like running in the rain, not unless it’s after a cat.”
Which was exactly what had appeared on the greenbelt that ran just behind her apartment complex. A golden-colored ball of fur had materialized to taunt Dakota before turning tail and flying down off the path.
In her eagerness to give chase, Dakota had nearly sent Charley sprawling into the freshly formed mud created by an unexpected shower on the city. Who knew it was going to rain? Certainly not the weatherman.
Charley rotated her right shoulder. She had no doubts that her efforts to hang on to the dog had lengthened her right arm by an inch, possibly two. The dog was far from a puppy, so why did she still feel she could chase after cats and catch them?
For the same reason you’re always chasing after the bad guys, hell-bent to bring them all in, even with the odds against you.
Like dog, like master.
Charley tossed off the last of her wet clothes, grabbed the pile and hurried into the bathroom. Habit had her grabbing both her cell phone and the wireless phone that was perched on the table against the wall two steps shy of the entrance.
She was an FBI special agent attached to the Santa Ana field office. That meant on duty or off, she was on call twenty-four/seven. That meant everywhere, including the bathroom.
Charley closed the door behind her and set both phones on the window ledge in the shower stall before she slipped in. After angling the showerhead, she turned on the faucet. Warm water turned to hot almost immediately. Steam formed, embracing her, leaving its imprint in the form of tears along the light blue tiles.
It would have taken Charley no effort at all to remain there for the next hour, just letting the heat penetrate, melting the tension from her body. But there was no room for indulgence this morning. Her alarm clock had failed in its effort to rouse her. When she finally had woken up, thanks to Dakota’s cold nose pressed up against her spine, Charley had taken one glance at the clock and hit the ground running.
She was forty-five minutes behind schedule.
Another person would have foregone the four-mile jog that began each morning. But Charley was all about dedication and routine. Come six o’clock, she was out there, pounding along the thin ribbon of asphalt that threaded its way from one end of the greenbelt to the other. Rain or shine. Only the call of duty arriving in the middle of the night interfered with her schedule.
Charley shampooed her long blond hair while humming the chorus from the Rodgers and Hammer-stein song, “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.” There was no man to wash out, not from her hair or her life, but she liked the song. She’d always taken comfort in the familiar.
Not like her twin sister. Cristine had always been the risk-taker, the one who was willing to rush off into the unknown. The one who hadn’t needed the familiar or the comforting. Charley had been the one who took things slow and easy.
And she’d been the one who’d survived.
Not now.
Charley shook thoughts of her sister away. Had to be the dank weather penetrating her soul. She liked the sunshine better.
She’d just started to work the lather out of her hair when the phone rang. The chimes identified it to be her cell, not the landline. The sound worked its way through the running water, through her humming.
Never a dull moment.
With a sigh, Charley wiped her eyes with her fingertips, shut the water and brought the cell phone down to her ear.
“Dow.”
“There’s been another one.”
Charley froze. All the warmth within the stall seemed to instantly evaporate. She didn’t have to ask another one what, she knew.
And it sent a chill through her heart.
The voice on the other end of the receiver belonged to Assistant Director George Kelly’s secretary, Alice Sullivan. The woman was calling on his behalf to inform the special agents assigned to the serial-killer task force that another victim had been claimed by the monster who was laying siege to the Southland.
Charley pushed back her wet hair from her forehead. Damn it, anyway. “When?”
“A.D. Kelly said they found the body this morning. He believes she was killed sometime yesterday. He wants to hold a meeting as soon as possible.”
Yesterday. Sunday. The same day her sister had been killed. The same day all the victims had been killed. She was beginning to hate Sundays.
But maybe this time there’d be something they could work with, something that would help them finally catch this bastard.
“Tell him I’m on my way.” Charley looked at her free hand. There were traces of foam on it. “Just got to get the soap out of my hair.”
“You’re in the shower?”
Charley could hear the apology hovering in Alice’s throat, ready to leap out. She’d never met anyone so ready to apologize for absolutely everything. Given half a chance, Alice would have apologized that February only had twenty-eight days instead of thirty.
She cut the other woman off quickly. “We’ve all got to be somewhere, Alice. I’ll see you in
a few minutes.”
Traffic allowing, Charley added silently as she pressed the off button.
With the speed of someone accustomed to living her life on the run, Charley rinsed the stiffening shampoo from her hair and toweled herself dry, all within two minutes of ending her conversation with Alice.
Wrapped in the damp towel, she opened the bathroom door and promptly tripped over Dakota, who had stretched herself before the threshold like a living, furry obstacle course. Charley braced herself against the doorjamb at the last moment.
“Dog, this is not the morning to test me. We’ll play when I get home, okay?”
As if giving her tentative approval to the bargain, Dakota trotted after Charley as she dashed into her small, untidy bedroom. Her next mission was to find something suitable to wear that wasn’t badly in need of a visit to the laundry room. Not the easiest of missions.
Charley settled on a dark blue skirt and light blue pullover, both of which she yanked over her body. She grabbed her gray jacket, slipped on a pair of high heels, then went for the hardware.
First, the weapon she wore tucked into the back of her waistband, then the small one that this morning was strapped to her thigh rather than her ankle. No matter how much of a hurry Charley was in, this part of her ritual was precise, methodical. Slow. The fate of Dakota’s next meal depended on it. If she was careless, if she hurried, there might be no one to give the dog her evening meal. And Dakota had been through enough in her lifetime. She had been Cris’s dog first and the transition, after her sister’s murder, had been a difficult one for both her and the animal.
Dakota followed her to the door, emitting a mournful noise that sounded very much like a whistling wind.
“Don’t start,” Charley warned.
She glanced toward the dog’s water and food bowls. Both were full. The teenager she paid to walk Dakota in the afternoon would be by at two o’clock. The dog was taken care of.
Time was short. Charley knew she should already be in her car. Still, she paused for half a second to squat down beside the German shepherd and give the animal a hug. She loved the contrary beast. They had something in common. They both missed Cris.
“I’ll be back,” she promised. “And then we’ll laugh, we’ll cry, and one of us will get a big treat.”
Squaring her shoulders, Charley rose. It was time to leave the shelter of her small apartment and take down the bad guys.
The realization that they might very well be waiting to take her down never escaped her.
TRAFFIC WAS UNUSUALLY sluggish this morning, doubling the fifteen-minute trip from her apartment to the Federal Building where the Bureau field office was housed. The annoying deejays on the radio did nothing to lessen the tension that rode along with her in her four-year-old Honda. She kept switching back and forth between three stations with no luck. None played a song she liked.
Would they catch him this time?
Would the bastard who had cut short the lives of eleven unsuspecting women finally trip up and leave a clue behind so that they could put him out of everyone else’s misery?
She wished she could believe that he would, but her customary optimism was in short supply this morning. Maybe it was the rain that was responsible for her less-than-cheery outlook. It had been raining the night she had come back from the part-time job she’d taken only to find her sister dead in the off-campus apartment they shared. Cris, it turned out later, had been the Sunday Killer’s first victim.
Or, at least, his first known victim, she amended. Who knew if there had been others? Just like who knew why it had been Cris and not she who had been the victim.
Maybe the killer had made a mistake. Maybe Cris was supposed to live and she was the one who was supposed to have died.
Don’t go there, Charley. It’s not going to help.
She could feel her nerves jangling, beginning to fray. If she let them unravel, she wouldn’t be of use to anyone, not her sister, not to the latest victim. Not even to herself. Unraveling was selfish and indulgent, and she didn’t have time for that. Solving this case was all that mattered. She owed it to Cris.
Charley’s hands tightened on the wheel.
THE ROAD OPENED UP just as she took a turn for the cluster of modern buildings that made up the Civic Center in the heart of Santa Ana. In the middle, standing slightly taller than the rest, was the Federal Building.
Turning on her blinker, she merged to the right.
A car sped by her, cutting her off, splashing water all over her windshield and hopelessly obscuring her view for the length of a very long heartbeat.
“Bastard,” she muttered. The second her wipers cleared the windshield for her, she saw the offending vehicle’s D.C. plates. A tourist. It figured. Obviously the man behind the wheel had no idea how to handle slick roads out here.
She laughed shortly to herself. Californians barely remembered how to do it themselves from one rainy season to another.
As she drove into the bowels of the underground parking structure, she had a feeling it was going to be a very long day.
Dakota was not going to be happy with her when she finally got home.
CHAPTER THREE
AS A KID, Nickolas Brannigan never much cared for Mondays.
Mondays always meant regimentation. They meant getting back to the real world, whatever that might be. And First Mondays were the worst. They meant being thrown headlong into yet another new situation. Finding himself in yet another new location, with new names to remember, new faces to commit to memory.
And once there, those names remembered, those faces committed, they were immediately scheduled for future erasure, because as soon as his father’s new orders came through, he and his family packed up, headed for another army camp, another part of the country or the world. With more faces, more names waiting for him.
One would have thought that with eighteen years of this under his belt, he could get through another First Monday with his eyes closed.
Maybe if his eyes were closed, it would be better.
But his eyes were wide-open, taking in every new thing. His need to observe and evaluate always made him feel like a duck in the desert, searching for an oasis. Or at least a decent puddle.
Not that anyone ever noticed he felt this way. He wouldn’t let them notice. Nick prided himself on his ability to hide his true feelings. People called him outgoing, even charming, without ever getting to know the real Nick Brannigan at all. They got to know the outer facade, the man he had to be.
So here he was, facing yet another First Monday. This time he was doing it three thousand miles away from the dot on the map that he had come to call home. Washington, D.C., where most of his family had settled down.
Even his wanderlust father. Retired Army Colonel Harlan Brannigan had decided to face the sunset of his life—though he never referred to it as that—as a teacher of all things. Much to his mother’s relief, the family had finally come together to set down roots.
Until the Bureau had seen fit to transfer him to the other side of the country. A spot had suddenly opened up in the California Santa Ana field office and they needed an experienced man to fill it. He could have refused the assignment but you couldn’t say no to the Bureau and expect to advance in the ranks. And he wanted to go far.
Now if he could only bring himself to unpack his things. He’d been living with moving-van boxes for companions these past few days. The boxes had arrived at his Bureau-chosen apartment at roughly the same time he had. Even his father would have approved of the Bureau’s efficiency.
For this First Monday, Nick was set to report in at nine-thirty. A phone call from someone identifying herself as Alice Sullivan from A.D. Kelly’s office had changed that. Because he was a transfer, he needed to check in and get official clearance before he saw his new boss. Fun and games were to begin an hour and a half earlier than expected. Eight o’clock in the morning was not his favorite time.
Negotiating the unfamiliar streets in the rain only
intensified the feeling of dread he couldn’t quite hide from himself, even if he did manage to keep it from the public at large. But then, if he hadn’t managed to get his persona in place at twenty-nine, he might as well have handed in all the marbles and gone home.
A horn blared behind him and he realized that he’d inadvertently cut someone off as he made his turn into the Civic Center.
He’d been told that no one used their horns out here in Orange County. That kind of quick-to-flare temper was something reserved for drivers in metropolitan areas, most notoriously in New York City. Although he had to admit that drivers in the Washington, D.C., area were by no means slouches in that department.
He glanced in his rearview mirror, but couldn’t make out who had been at the wheel of the car now behind him. Hopefully some forgiving soul. He’d heard it was the season for road rage out here in normally sunny California.
Searching for a parking structure, Nick admitted that he missed Washington. More than that, he missed his family, his mother, his brother, his sister and her brood. Hell, he even missed his old man.
Nick smiled to himself. Never thought he’d own up to that.
But he and his father were finally making some headway, finally seeing each other as people. It had been a long time in coming. Harlan Brannigan didn’t know how to relate to children. God knows the man was hardly around long enough to get the hang of it. But now that he and Jeff and Ashley were all grown, things were different.
Nick blew out a breath as he traveled into the underground parking structure. And now it was going to have to be different without him. At least for a while.
Spoils of war.
The ironic phrase had his mouth curving ever so slightly as he found a parking space and got out of his car. The clichéd phrase would have made his father proud.
Sundays Are for Murder Page 2
