Manhunt

by Carla Cassidy

  Apparently she suffered an exhaustion deeper than a mere day’s work, for within minutes he knew that she’d fallen sound asleep. She slept like a baby, soundlessly, curled up against him to create a warm cocoon at his side.

  For Nick, sleep was more elusive. He watched as night completely claimed the room, plunging everything into darkness except for the faint illumination from his clock and cell phone on the dresser.

  Making love to Alyssa had been the first thing Nick had done in a long time that had felt absolutely right. However, he was smart enough to realize that the basis of her attraction to him was a vision that had visited her before she’d ever even met him.

  He knew their circumstances weren’t exactly normal, and he couldn’t be sure how real any feelings they thought they might have for each other were. He wasn’t even sure of his own feelings where she was concerned.

  He wanted her. Physically she drew him to her with a heady desire that was impossible to ignore. She intrigued him, as well…the visions, the sadness he sometimes saw radiating from her eyes, the hunger for something more that he sensed inside her.

  But that didn’t mean that anything that happened now between them would last after the serial killer had been caught and her visions about him had stopped. Thankfully, he didn’t have to sort any of it out tonight, he thought as he felt sleep finally edging closer.

  He knew he was dreaming…knew because everything was black and white. Since Dorrie’s murder, his dreams had lost all their color. In the dream, he wandered the center square. The streets were deserted, the stores all closed up for the night. Not a living soul broke the silence of the night that surrounded him, but the dead were there.

  Greg Maxwell leaned against the public-library doors and waved at him as he walked by. Sam McClane raised a hand from his spot in front of the post office. Tim O’Brien grinned and tipped an imaginary hat from the bench in front of the hardware store and Jonathon Blackbird sat on a tree limb above the place where his body had been found.

  Then he was no longer walking the square, but was in a copse of trees with Alyssa, and colors exploded around him…the sharp blue of her eyes, the brilliant green of the leaves on the trees, the bright yellow of the blanket beneath them.

  The sharpness of the colors after the visions in black and white nearly blinded him and he held on to her, lost not only in the visual magnificence, but also in the splendor of making love to her.

  They rolled over so she was on top, controlling their sexual rhythm. Her eyes, which had shone with pleasure moments before, deepened in hue, becoming dark…darker, then black. A mocking, derisive smile curved her lips, then her arms were over her head and in her hands was a knife.

  Pain, sharper than any he’d ever experienced in his life, ripped through him as she slammed the knife into his chest. Blood, so red it hurt to look at, spurted from the wound. With a laugh of glee, she stabbed him again…and again…and her eyes glistened with the joy of the kill.

  He sat straight up, his heart racing with terror, his brain working to orient himself. He gasped and glanced at the bedside clock. Almost 2:00 a.m. His cell phone rang and he realized the jarring sound was what had pulled him from the horrific nightmare.

  Trying not to awaken Alyssa, he crept from the bed and grabbed the phone from the dresser. As he answered, the night-light was turned on and Alyssa sat up, her gaze intent on him.

  He listened to the voice at the other end of the line, then replied curtly, “I’ll be right there.”

  “What?” Alyssa asked as he hung up. “What’s happened, Nick?”

  “We don’t have to worry about Michael Stanmeyer being our serial killer,” he said as he reached for his clothes.

  “Why not?” Her eyes were huge as she clutched the sheet to her naked breast.

  “That was one of the cops on night patrol. They just found Michael in the center square. He’s been stabbed.”

  He heard the swift intake of Alyssa’s breath. “Is he…is he dead?”

  “He was alive when they found him.” Nick strapped on his ankle holster, then stepped into a pair of slacks. He had a bad feeling…a very bad feeling.

  He wasn’t sure if it was because of the disturbing dream he’d just suffered or because of the news he’d just received. But as his gaze met Alyssa’s, he suddenly realized a connection he hadn’t made before.

  Men in Cherokee Corners were being stabbed to death, and for the past month Alyssa had been having visions of herself stabbing a man to death. Was there a connection? Was she tapped into some sort of energy she didn’t even realize or understand?

  There was no time to question the issue with her now, but he realized no matter how painful it was for her, no matter how uncomfortable the visions made her and despite his desire to protect her, they were going to have to explore the depths of her psychic abilities.

  He was beginning to think that perhaps Alyssa’s mind might hold the only key that would lead to their killer.

  Chapter 10

  “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe that weird Michael is dead.” Virginia reached across the table and helped herself to another blueberry muffin.

  “I’d rather you not call him that,” Alyssa said without the patience she usually used with the often thoughtless, attractive widow. “Especially now. You should have a little respect for the dead.”

  The two women were alone in the dining room. Alyssa’s irritation with Virginia had begun earlier that morning when Virginia had first come down for breakfast and Alyssa had hurried upstairs to make her bed and clean the room.

  At that time, neither of them had heard the news about Michael. Alyssa’s first irritation with Virginia had come when she’d seen that the woman had apparently spilled fingernail polish remover all over the nightstand, ruining the finish on the cherrywood.

  Virginia had been a less-than-perfect boarder during her stay, but Alyssa had been reluctant to ask her to leave, knowing how Virginia dreaded going back to the lovely home she’d shared with her murdered husband.

  She’d finished cleaning the room, then had hurried back downstairs when the phone had rung. Virginia took the call, and when she’d hung up, she’d announced to Alyssa that Michael had been attacked the night before and had died before they’d gotten him to the hospital.

  “You’re right, that wasn’t nice of me,” Virginia agreed easily. “But, honestly, Alyssa, you have to admit that he was strange.”

  “He was painfully shy,” Alyssa replied, a lump in her throat as she thought of Michael. “I noticed when I was cleaning earlier that you’ve spilled something on the nightstand in your room…” She hadn’t really meant to say anything, but the woman’s irreverence toward Michael pushed her buttons.

  “Fingernail polish remover. I’m so sorry.” She pursed her pouty lips in a gesture of apology. “I’ll pay for a new nightstand.” She set her muffin on the plate in front of her and her eyes suddenly teared up. “Greg used to say that nail polish was as sexy as black hose. He loved it when I painted my nails.”

  She stared down at her hands, the nails at the moment unpolished but neatly manicured. “I keep trying to polish them. I’ll put polish on one hand, but then I start thinking about Greg and…and…I just can’t do it.”

  A little choking sob escaped her and Alyssa felt like a total jerk for even mentioning the blemished surface. “Don’t worry about the nightstand,” she said. “I’m sure I’ve got a replacement someplace in storage.”

  Virginia dabbed at her tears with her napkin, then picked up the blueberry muffin once again. “I thought you were expecting new guests to check in.”

  Alyssa blinked to rapidly process Virginia’s quicksilver change of topic and mood. “Yes, they were booked to stay for the next three nights, but they called and canceled due to illness.”

  It was probably a good thing the couple from Des Moines had canceled their stay. Alyssa knew it wouldn’t be long and the police would be at the bed-and-breakfast, inside Michael’s bedroom, searching for
clues to who might have wanted him dead.

  She left Virginia at the table and returned to the kitchen, her thoughts still focused on the tall, thin, quiet man who had been her boarder for almost two years.

  Last night they’d entertained the thought that he might be the serial killer. Today he was a tragic victim. She didn’t even know if he had family, if there was somebody who needed to be contacted, if somebody would even miss his very presence on earth.

  She hadn’t known Michael well, hadn’t taken the time to get to know him. But her heart broke as she thought of him stabbed and left naked someplace in the area. Poor Michael.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen island, her thoughts leaving Michael and turning to Nick and the night they had spent together.

  It wasn’t exactly morning-after regrets that weighed on her mind, but it was a wary acknowledgment that as wonderful as last night had been, it had simply been one night and nothing more.

  Nick was getting too close, invading areas inside her she’d never opened to anyone else and that frightened her a little. Her natural instinct, the instinct that had served her well for her entire life, was to pull back and protect herself.

  Nick would hopefully solve the murders, then would leave Cherokee Corners. She would remain here, living her life with her visions as company and entertaining superficial relationships with the guests who came and went.

  Her grandmother had told her long ago that she would probably live her life alone, that people with the special gift of visions were usually alone, and it was best if she reconciled herself to that fact early in her life.

  When her grandmother had died and she’d gone to live with the James family, even though love and support had surrounded her, she’d felt the aloneness her grandmother had spoken of. She hadn’t quite fit in anywhere for the entirety of her life. Her visions had deemed her odd, separate, and that’s the way she’d felt for most of her life.

  The only time she hadn’t felt that feeling was last night, when she’d been in Nick’s arms. But, with the light of day shining full through the kitchen windows, she knew better than to pretend that she and Nick would be anything more than a brief relationship while he was in town.

  Nick was her gift to herself, a treasure that she could remember long after he was gone. Besides, she was probably just a transition kind of woman for Nick, the first one to reawaken him after Dorrie’s death. Perhaps that was all she was meant to be in his life.

  She had learned at her grandmother’s knee not to question or fight fate, but rather to accept what life brought in the Cherokee way…with dignity and strength.

  “Alyssa?” Virginia poked her head into the kitchen. “I’m going upstairs now to lie down. All this commotion has made me feel sick and I have a headache coming on. I just thought I’d let you know so you could go ahead and clear off the breakfast things.”

  Alyssa nodded and waved a hand at the pretty blonde. She wasn’t the only one with a headache. Alyssa had been fighting one since awakening to the news that Michael had been stabbed. She finished drinking her coffee, then wearily pulled herself up and out of her chair.

  She hadn’t gone back to sleep after the phone call that had taken Nick away in the middle of the night. Even though she had left his room and gone downstairs to her own bed, sleep had refused to revisit her.

  It was just before eleven o’clock when they arrived. Alyssa had finished cleaning up the dining room and kitchen, when Nick and two men she’d never seen before walked in the front door.

  Nick quickly introduced her to the others, Bud and Tony, and told her they were his partners from Tulsa. “We need you to open up Michael’s room for us,” he said.

  She nodded solemnly, although there were a million questions she wanted to ask him. Had Michael told them anything before he’d died? Were they able to get any clues at all as to who was terrorizing the men in town?

  Although she wanted to ask, she knew this wasn’t the place or the time. The grim lines that bracketed his mouth and the dark shadows in his eyes let her know that Nick was fully immersed in the job they had to do.

  She pulled her master keys from her dress pocket and escorted the men to Michael’s door. Although she’d wanted to enter the room immediately when she’d heard that her boarder had died, she’d realized to do so might compromise the investigation.

  If she had been expecting to see strange and bewildering things in the room, she would have been disappointed. The room was as neat and clean as when she’d first shown it to Michael.

  She watched from the doorway as Nick and his two partners began to look around the room. Bud went to the closet, where he searched the pockets of the meager number of clothes hanging inside. Tony looked under the bed and then disappeared into the bathroom while Nick walked over to the table, where a laptop computer was closed and a neat stack of blank paper set next to it.

  “Stanmeyer ever mention any family at all?” He opened the laptop and booted it up.

  “No, none,” she replied.

  “What about mail? Did he ever receive any mail?”

  “Not here, but it’s possible he had a post-office box rented.”

  “Nothing here,” Tony said from the bathroom.

  “Check the drawers. Someplace this man has to have somebody who might give a damn that he’s dead.”

  Nick’s voice was coldly determined and all business and Alyssa realized she was seeing a side of him she’d never seen before. Instead of the teasing, sexy, friendly man she’d come to know, he was now a professional profiler, looking for clues, seeking the road map that would take him into the mind of a killer.

  “From what we’ve learned so far, it would appear our Mr. Stanmeyer was an English professor from California,” Nick said as his fingers worked the mouse on the laptop.

  “An English professor?” Alyssa took a step into the room. “I wonder what brought him here.”

  “Apparently three years ago he applied for disability from social security because of severe panic attacks that made it impossible for him to teach. He was granted disability and told his co-workers that he was moving to a small town and was going to try to write a book.”

  A wave of sadness swept through Alyssa as she thought of Michael. Nick seemed to sense her feelings. “It wasn’t like the others,” he said softly. “He’d been stabbed, but he was found fully dressed.”

  Alyssa wasn’t sure, but somehow that made it easier, that the killer hadn’t stripped him naked and left him for his fellow townspeople to see. “But was it the same killer?”

  “We don’t know yet. We’re waiting for the medical examiner to tell us.”

  “I’ll just leave you all to do your work,” she said and started to back out of the room. “Just let me know when you’re finished and I’ll lock the room once again.”

  She went back down to the kitchen, drained of what little energy she’d awakened possessing. It didn’t take long for the phone to begin ringing. She received calls from her aunt Rita, her “sisters,” Breanna and Savannah, and her new sister-in-law and best friend, Tamara. She also got calls from the curious, looking for more information about the latest murder.

  Nick and his team remained upstairs for about an hour and a half, then they left, but not before Nick told her she was temporarily shut down. “Don’t let anyone in or out of here except Virginia,” he said. “No new guests for the time being.”

  She nodded and he paused before turning to leave. “You okay?” he asked softly.

  “Yes…just sad.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m past being sad and I’m moving quickly into the pissed-off stage.” With these words he turned and left.

  The silence of the house reverberated around her and she returned to the kitchen island and sat, trying to decide if she wanted to make another pot of coffee or not. She opted against it. She’d already had too much caffeine and it was just after noon.

  A knock on the front door carried her back to the living room and the front entr
ance of the bed-and-breakfast.

  She opened the door to see Scott Moberly standing there, his freckled face lit with eager anticipation. She considered slamming the door as quickly as possible rather than having to talk to the overeager young newspaper reporter. But she’d learned when her aunt Rita had been missing that Scott was nothing if not tenacious.

  “Hey, Alyssa.” He smiled brightly as she stepped out onto the porch.

  “What do you want, Scott?” Alyssa had mixed feelings about Scott. He was one of the few people in town who knew with absolute certainty that Alyssa sometimes had visions.

  He’d covered a case of a missing child several years ago and one of Alyssa’s visions had led the police to the child, who’d gotten lost and had curled up in an old shed and had fallen asleep.

  Scott had overheard a heated discussion between Alyssa and the lead officer assigned to the case. The lead officer had written her off as a nut and refused to pay any attention to what she was telling him about the child’s whereabouts.

  It had taken a lot of pleading and begging from Alyssa to make Scott promise to keep her out of his newspaper article on the case. Thankfully, Scott’s need to please people often got into the way of his reporting. Reluctantly he’d agreed not to use her name.

  “What do I want? Jeez, Alyssa, what do you think I want? I know you’ve got the FBI guy staying here, one of the victim’s wives here, and now one of your boarders has been murdered.” He held a pencil and pad at the ready. “So, what are your thoughts about all this?”

  “No comment,” she replied.

  Scott frowned in dismay. “Ah, come on, Alyssa, don’t be like that. Have you seen anything…you know what I mean?”

  “No, Scott.” She sighed wearily. “There’s no story here, nothing I can give you that would make interesting, newsworthy reading.”

  Scott’s smile fell. “Anything interesting you can tell me about Michael Stanmeyer? Nobody around here seems to have known much about him.”