"I didn't bring these with me because I thought this would be all over before I had to explain it. But here's verification that what I'm telling you is the truth." He curled her fingers around the first sheet of paper. "Please, I want you to read these."
Her eyes flicked over the item, then jumped back to him.
"Please." He wasn’t too proud to beg.
She looked at the beginning of the article again. He licked his lips nervously as she began to read.
She scowled as she handed the paper back to him. "So?"
For a moment, the image of the woman in Colorado was superimposed on Jonna's. That had been her reaction, too. He glanced down at the next one and a lump thickened his throat. "Now, this."
The grainy picture at the top of the page caught and held her eyes. They grew wider as she read the headline and looked back up at him questioningly. "Your sister?"
He managed a nod, keeping the deep and painful gasp where it belonged, inside. Shifting his weight from one bent leg to the other, he focused on the sky behind her. The expanse of milky gray framed her shoulders and didn't make judgments. If she looked at him with disbelief or accusations or even sympathy right now, he wasn't sure what he would do.
"I'm very sorry," she said at last. "But I don't see what this proves or has to do with me."
Wordlessly, he handed her another paper. She skimmed the page, her face devoid of expression. His restless feet itched to walk away, to leave her to her fate. Today he'd balanced so close to failure once again that he could barely think. Why was he so willing to torture himself this way? Jonna was nothing to him. Nothing.
Standing, jamming his fingertips into the pockets of his tight new jeans, he forced himself to maintain his guarding stance.
She looked up at him and extended the printed pages toward him. They fell and limply draped her hand. "I still don't see—"
"Read the top of the clippings announcing the awards," he ordered. Two of the articles had the standard logo, Tiger Watch, and the date printed at the top of the column. The words were scrawled in a bold stroke across the bottom of the third small alumni news item.
"Yeah, I recognized the NET alumni paper," she said.
"Don't you think it's strange that all three of these graduates died violently within a couple of days of winning some kind of award?"
Jonna eyed him speculatively, obviously wondering whether she dared disagree. "Coincidental, maybe," she said tactfully, "but strange? People die all the time." She lifted her chin slightly. "Some of them are murdered. But these people are probably not the only NET graduates to die in the past two years."
Sam wanted to scream, yell, pull his hair out with the injustice of it The same old arguments. His muscles tightened with the familiar frustration. She was making him mad. Somehow he had expected more from her. He realized he had begun to hope that she would understand.
"Tell me about your sister's murder," she said. "Give me one good reason to believe they're connected."
Sam swept a weary hand through his hair. He felt it stand on end but ignored the impulse to smooth it. Somehow, wild disarray seemed to match the moment. "I've told you the best reasons I know." He told her about being the one to find Denise. About the police investigation. About their concession that it might have something to do with the award. "The police checked into the whereabouts of the other nominees for Denise's award—the most likely suspects if it wasn't a random act of violence," he said. "Except for one, they all had alibis. The one who didn't was clear across the country," he added before she could ask. "He was the only one of the nominees that hadn't been at the ceremony." He told her the police's final decision to categorize the circumstances of her murder as an attempted robbery.
"But how could they all be connected? They all died in far-flung parts of the country."
"The only connection the victims share is the college."
"Someone from the college is doing this?"
"No," he denied. "I don't know. I've gone through every bit of information I can find and there isn't a soul—staff or student—at the college who was in all these different places when the murders occurred."
"Then how-"
"I know it doesn't make sense," he conceded. His hands felt especially useless, hanging at his side. Honesty, Barton, she trusts honesty. "The killer can't even be a former student who receives his alumni newsletter and then does the deed. In two out of three of these, the murders happened before the alumni newsletters announcing the awards were sent out."
"Then how did you—"
"I don't have a thing to go on but pure, gut-level certainty—but I've been right twice."
He felt perversely satisfied when Jonna visibly shuddered, then perversely irritated at himself for caring whether or not she believed. He just wanted someone to, he told himself.
"That doesn't mean the police and the FBI believe me," he added.
"You've talked to them?"
He nodded. "They think I added two and two together and came up with five."
The confusion on Jonna's face deepened.
"But look at the pattern, Jonna," he said. "Look around you."
Renewed horror rioted across her face as she reassessed the chaos around them.
"Think about it. If I did this, why would I come back?" He settled in front of her again, tentatively touching her cold hand.
Her shoulders drooped dejectedly. She closed those incredibly seductive eyes. It was a small, unconscious sign of trust. He was making progress.
"If I wanted to hurt you, why wouldn't I have done so already?"
"How would I know?" she said wearily.
"If I'm not telling the truth, Jonna, who did this? And why?" He waited momentarily for a reaction, then answered his own question. "Someone wants to kill you, Jonna. And until someone else believes me, I'm your best— your only defense."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Her best defense? Jonna looked around her. A knot of terror formed around her chest and squeezed. She wasn't sure which was the most terrifying. Him? Or his story?
"I came here to protect you."
"Well, if you're telling me the truth, you aren't any damn good at that." She burst out of her seat, past him. She saw him move from the corner of her eye and turned on him. Her voice broke on the verge of a sob. "Look at this mess."
It was inconceivable. She felt doubly betrayed. He wasn't even similar to the man he'd led her to believe he was. And he was thirty times the con artist Jeffrey had been.
She faltered backward and almost tripped over one of the lamps. The noise made her jump; the chaos around her reflected the cold confusion she was feeling. She wanted to rush forward, to the man she couldn't afford to trust, because his arms had felt so warm. Could they make the shaking go away? "Why would anyone want to kill me?"
"The award."
"Why?"
"I don't know. Denise was dead a day after winning hers."
The woman in the picture had been very pretty, a fine- tuned version of Sam. In the picture, Denise's eyes had sparkled merrily; she'd exuded life. Could those hands have strangled his beautiful sister?
He held one more fax printout toward her. "The same guy who killed Denise killed Leah Darcy."
Jonna accepted the flimsy paper that emotionlessly reported the bare details of another victim's death.
His head dipped. "You can't imagine how I felt when I read that in the newspaper in my hotel room the next morning."
Jonna read of Leah Darcy's death in spurts, glancing from him to the page, from the page to him. "Her children found her?" The article slipped from her fingers.
"Her eleven-year-old daughter," Sam confirmed.
"So you think this...this.. .nut is some kind of serial killer who runs around the country murdering women who receive awards?" She wouldn't have thought the chill at the roots of her nerves could turn any colder, but it did.
"I only know about the ones who have graduated from NET." His mouth formed
a grim line.
"You think there are more?" Comprehension took all her breath away.
"Probably not. I don't know. From the research I've done, this guy would be considered a pattern killer—not a serial killer," Sam corrected. "Females. Award winners. NET alumnae. You fit the pattern, Jonna. And unless, for some reason, he doesn't know about you, you're next."
Jonna closed her eyes, blocking him out. She would have given anything to know what to believe. Her eyes jolted open again and she was relieved he hadn't moved.
God! She was too trusting. And it was going to catch up with her soon if she continued to let herself trust everything he said.
"What did you do with Darrell?" she asked suddenly. "The guy Moss really sent this morning," she explained resentfully at his scowl. "The guy who should have had this job."
"Same thing I did with your last hired man," he said flatly. "I gave him a thousand dollars to get himself settled in Texas and offered him a job in either the Grounds Maintenance or Security departments at the college."
"He took it?"
"The money? Gladly. But not the job. He and his wife want to stay in this area if they can. My only stipulation was that neither of them come back here," he added with a hard edge that plainly told her not to get her hopes up that she had options besides him.
At this point, she didn't care. Her only worry now was what to think. What to believe. Where was Moss? Where were all the friends she listened to when she couldn't rely strictly on common sense? She had to have time to think.
He seemed to understand her plight and didn't push her. His patience made her vulnerable, though. It made her inclined to simply trust him.
"Shall we call the police now?" he asked, startling her. "Now that he's done something we can pinpoint, actually show them--" His hand swept the room with a broad gesture. "--maybe they'll listen. And if I'm going to get him this time," he added, "I need all the help I can get."
* * *
Rodney Madden, the county sheriff, gingerly picked his way through the debris. "Jonna, this isn't the kind of excuse I like, but it's sure nice to see you again. Has someone taken a strong dislike to you?" He stepped toward her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders as he surveyed the room. "Got any ideas about what happened here?"
Jonna turned to Sam and listened as he told a brief version of his story again.
Sheriff Madden absently rubbed his ear as Sam finished. "We'll have to confirm all that. Now, Jonna." Madden led her toward the kitchen. "We'll let Gary get on with his powdering, see if we can lift a fingerprint or two. Let's get out of his way. How about a cup of coffee?"
"Sounds good." Jonna appreciated the sheriff finding her something to do. Sam and Madden sat down at the table. She listened intently as Sam answered questions.
Rodney Madden was skillful. He managed to sound sympathetic as Sam filled in blanks. She saw Madden perk up when some of the questions brought out Sam's military and security background. She herself was impressed to learn that Sam had pioneered a campus escort service at night, a security measure that had become standard at colleges and universities across the nation.
"The police thought Denise caught a burglar in the act when she was killed," Sam explained. "A matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing was stolen, but they believe whoever did it didn't have time to take anything before Denise walked in and interrupted them. I assumed they knew what they were talking about until almost nine months later."
"What happened then," Madden asked.
"One Saturday morning I was hanging out in Barry's office. He's a friend of mine, the director of Alumni Affairs. He was looking up some information for me, and while I waited I read the proofs for the alumni magazine about to go to press. I ran across a couple of items about JoAnne Campbell. The announcement of her award was in the same issue as the announcement of her death."
"And it reminded you of Denise? You thought it was too much of a coincidence?" Madden asked.
"I knew." Sam's voice held an eerie certainty.
A chill crept up Jonna's back and she paused in her search through the debris for mugs.
"You knew... what?"
"I knew the same person who killed Denise had killed JoAnne Campbell."
"Same award?"
"No." Sam said the word reluctantly.
"Different parts of the country."
"Denise was killed in California. JoAnne Campbell lived in Connecticut." Sam's slow response, his defensive tone hinted that he'd been asked the same questions before. And his answers hadn't been believed.
Madden cleared his throat. "And you called the police?"
"The inspector in charge of Denise's case."
"You've kept in touch with him?"
"From time to time." Sam didn't hide his frustration.
"And they hadn't found your sister's killer?"
"No." Sam sighed heavily. "They had checked out Denise's co-workers, they'd talked to friends, to the guy she'd been dating and her boyfriends for the past two or three years. They even checked into the whereabouts of the other nominees for her award. I checked it all again when I started putting things together and came to the same conclusions. Everyone loved Denise. No one had a solid motive."
"Coffee," Jonna announced. "I can't remember, Sheriff, do you take anything in yours?"
"Just straight." Madden took the mug and motioned her into the seat next to him. He turned his attention back to Sam. "So they called the FBI and they, in turn, contacted the local authorities in Connecticut."
"Only because I insisted." Sam sloshed coffee over the top of his cup as he swiveled back to face the table. He didn't seem to notice.
"And the FBI ran the whole scenario through their fancy computers and didn't come up with any similarities?"
"They didn't know Jo Anne and Denise had both graduated from the same university. They didn't know they'd both recently received awards."
"And when they did?"
"They believed it was a coincidence." Sam propped his elbows on the table and buried his face in one hand. He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips.
"Did they say why?"
Sam shrugged. "Denise was strangled with someone's bare hands. Her apartment was a mess, about like this. They still think she interrupted a robbery. JoAnne Campbell was strangled, too, but whoever did it used gloves. They can't guess the motive, but she wasn't especially well liked. They don't think it was robbery. They believe it was someone she knew and trusted. She'd let him in.
"What kind of award did Denise receive?"
"She was a graphic artist. She'd won an advertising award for some special type of layout."
"And JoAnne Campbell?"
Sam gazed deeply into his mug, as if he'd find answers in the dark pool of liquid he hadn't even sipped. "Her award was some kind of regional award for her work with a local community theater."
Madden's face was unreadable. He gulped at his coffee as his undersheriff came around the corner. "Gary? You findin' anything?"
"Guess we'll see when we get the results back from Wichita," Gary answered.
"So you want to tell me about the third one, Barton?"
The skin around Sam's expressive mouth whitened.
"Barry promised to alert me if he received any more award notifications on female alumnae."
Madden nodded, encouraging Sam to go on.
"It was for journalism. I went to Colorado the day before she was to accept it so that I could warn her." Sam lifted one hand dismissively. "She was dead four days later."
"How?" Jonna asked before Madden could. He patted her hand.
"Strangled?" Madden asked after a moment.
"Yes."
"Was she robbed?"
Sam shook his head.
"Were any of them molested? Disfigured in any way?"
Sam shook his head again. "Not exactly."
"What do you mean?"
Sam lowered his head and muffled his voice with his hand.
"Denise and JoAnne Campbell were arranged in a... he posed them in a suggestive position."
"But not the third one?"
Sam shook his head. "I don't think he had time. He ran out of time."
Madden leaned back in his chair and sighed.
Jonna watched him, anxious to know what he was thinking.
"Well," Madden drawled, "I see why the FBI failed to pick up similarities on their computers."
Between Dusk and Dawn Page 12
