As Darkness Fell

by Joanna Wayne

  “Ohhh. So that’s why we switched to doubles today. You’re matchmaking again.”

  “That and I wanted you to meet Jack.”

  “I met him at your party, remember? You’re not getting serious about him, are you?”

  “I’m not sure. I like him a lot. He’s different from the other guys I date. And I get chills when he looks at me with those piercing pale blue eyes. He could just be the one.”

  “No way,” Caroline said, stepping into the changing room and grabbing a towel for the shower. “You are not about to settle down.”

  “It could happen. You never know when love might hit. So go out there at lunch and bat those gorgeous eyes at Dave, and you can have him sitting up and begging.”

  “I was thinking of getting a dog for that.”

  Dave was a nice guy, but it was Sam that Caroline was thinking of when she stepped into the shower. Maybe she should try batting her eyes at him, though the thought of eye batting was pretty disgusting.

  He would have kissed her yesterday at his house if Matt hadn’t interrupted. She’d instigated the intimacy when she’d moved closer to him on the massive leather couch. She’d wanted his kiss and more.

  But if he’d wanted the same, he would have come by last night or at least called. He hadn’t, and he hadn’t called this morning, either. Maybe a picture in his den and memories were all he needed.

  Love always, Peg.

  SAM PACED his office Monday morning—if you could call walking in circles around a crowded square office pacing. He had a case that was going nowhere, a chief of police who was on his back night and day, and a frightened citizenry who were walking around with loaded guns.

  Trudy Mitchell was still in the hospital, and while the doctors reported she was making a terrific physical recovery, she was still lying there like a deaf mute.

  The psychologist they’d called in to consult said it was a result of the trauma and that her speech would probably return soon. Soon could be anytime.

  Information tying Trudy to the man who’d killed Sally and Ruby had not been officially released, but speculation was running rampant around the hospital and the town.

  No one in Prentice had ever had an armed guard at their hospital door—at least, not in recent memory. And still Trudy didn’t feel safe enough to talk. But Sam wasn’t giving up.

  A good description and a competent artist, and they’d have the perp’s picture out all over the state of Georgia in a matter of minutes. And he knew the artist for the job. All he needed was Trudy to give a halfway adequate description. Something more than the fact that the man was blond and cute.

  Sam picked up the phone, surprised that the phone number was right there on the tip of his memory. He dialed the San Antonio Police Department and asked for Captain Tony Sistrunk.

  “Speak of the devil,” Tony said when Sam identified himself. “I was just reading an article about you and the Prentice Park Killer. Guess you can’t get away from lunatics even in rural America.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “So how are you doing, you old reprobate? Catching any fish?”

  They talked for a few minutes, laughing, remembering old times, leaving a lot more unsaid than said. No mention of Peg. No mention of the guy who’d killed her. The case was cold. No one but Sam probably gave it any thought anymore.

  “I was calling about Josephine Sterling. Is she still doing composite sketches for you?”

  “Yep. And still the best in the business. Do you have an eyewitness for your killer?”

  “I’m not sure.” He explained the situation to Tony, including the fact that he might never get his witness to talk. “Do you think Josephine would fly out to Georgia?”

  “I’m sure she would. She’s a sucker for a challenge.”

  “Nice to know she hasn’t changed.”

  “Do you want her phone number?”

  “Yeah.” Sam wrote it down. “Wish you were out here, Tony. You could sink your tobacco-stained old teeth into this case.”

  “You don’t need me. You’ll get the guy soon without my help. I don’t guess you’ve heard the latest on R.J.”

  “I hope it’s that my stepbrother is rotting in jail.”

  “No such luck. The appeals judge let him off on a technicality. Free and clear. Doesn’t even have a parole officer.”

  Sam muttered a few choice words under his breath. “When did that happen?”

  “About three weeks ago, but I just found out about it. I tried to call you yesterday, but kept getting a busy signal, and I hated to leave such disgusting news in a recorded message.”

  “It’s only a matter of time until he gets arrested again. The guy’s rotten to the core.”

  “Tell me about it. But he’s smart. Never underestimate him.”

  “Believe me, I wouldn’t.”

  “So tell me about your Prentice Park Killer.”

  “I could use you here on this one.”

  Sam and Tony talked for a good half hour, going over the evidence Sam had on the murder cases and discussing possibilities. When he hung up, Sam pulled out the autopsy reports on both victims. He’d read them before, gone over and over them the way he’d done every other bit of information about the murders, but there was always a chance he’d missed something.

  Sam’s cell phone rang. What now? he thought, grabbing the phone from the leather pouch at his waist. “Sam Turner.”

  “Sam, it’s Sylvia in records. Did I get you at a bad time?”

  “Haven’t been a lot of good times for the last two weeks.”

  “About that reporter, Caroline Kimberly.”

  “Yeah. I meant to call you. Sorry I forgot. You can forget about checking her out.”

  “You might not think that when you hear what I found.”

  His stomach tightened. “Bad news?”

  “I’ll let you be the judge.”

  He was shaken when he hung up a few minutes later, even though he knew Caroline’s past wasn’t really any of his business. Still, knowing it changed things. He’d been in this business too long, knew better than to overlook anything. She was his link with a killer, and now she’d dredged up what might be his only eyewitness, a woman who’d almost gotten killed a short time after she’d talked to Caroline.

  He’d trusted everything Caroline had told him, had no reason not to. But he couldn’t do that now. For all he knew she could have her own agenda.

  He walked to the window and stared out at the parking lot, sick inside, the headache pounding in both temples.

  “Hello, Sam.”

  The voice sent a rush of awareness through him. Like a sip of aged Scotch that burns and feels good both at the same time. He turned and stared much too long. Damn, she looked good.

  “What brings you down to police headquarters, Reporter Lady?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Perfect timing. I need to talk to you, too.”

  “Does it have to do with Trudy? Because I think I might be able to get her to talk if I could see her without her mother in the room.”

  “No. It has to do with Daphne Greene.”

  She exhaled sharply, but met his gaze. “What gave you the right to go snooping into my past?”

  He motioned to his chair, the only uncluttered place to sit. “Sit down and we’ll discuss this rationally.”

  “No, thank you. I don’t sit down with men once they’ve stabbed me in the back.”

  He walked over and closed the door. “I had a routine background check done on you. It’s my job.”

  “Routine for suspects. I’m not one.”

  “You’re the only person the killer has contacted. That makes you an integral part of the case.”

  She turned away and stared out the window. “What did you find out about me, Sam?”

  “Evidently you took a fingerprint test when you taught in Atlanta.”

  “They didn’t find anything wrong. They hired me.”

  “They only checked to make certain you
didn’t have a criminal record. I had our analyst check further. The prints of Caroline Kimberly matched the prints of a teenager living at the Grace Girls’ Home ten years ago. The analyst reported that your real name was Daphne Greene.”

  “Your analyst was wrong. I was never Daphne Greene any more than I am Caroline Kimberly. I was never anyone. No name. No ties. No relatives. Is that what you wanted to know, that I’m a nobody? Are you happy now, Sam?”

  “I’m sorry, Caroline. I just have to ask these questions.”

  “Fine. Ask away.”

  “No. I was out of line. You’re right, as usual. You’re not a suspect and your past is none of my business. But for the record, you’re definitely not a nobody.”

  “You’d have a hard time proving that no matter how many analysts or investigators you had working the case. But you can’t just throw out something like this and then back off and say everything’s fine, Sam. It doesn’t work that way. Ask your questions.”

  “I don’t want to do this.”

  “Then I’ll ask them for you. What happened to your parents, Reporter Lady? Who knows? Someone found me in a trash bin in a back alley in downtown Savannah when I was less than twenty-four hours old. Thrown away, buried under coffee grounds and stale food and rancid meat crawling with maggots.”

  “Did they tell you that in the girls’ home?”

  “No. I read it for myself in an old newspaper account from the night I was found. I’m nobody, Sam. I got tired of it. So I changed my name and stopped explaining to the world that I was a piece of trash that didn’t make it all the way to the dump. I got tired of being me.”

  There was no bitterness in her voice now, just a distant quality as if she’d faded into some dark place where no one could reach her. The anger had vanished and all that was left was a naive vulnerability, as if she wanted desperately to trust someone but couldn’t.

  Damn. That was what it was that reminded him of Peg. That look. Haunted. Peg had looked that way when he’d met her on the streets, then later, near the end when she’d been so afraid.

  “I left Grace Girls’ Home at eighteen,” she continued, “and worked my way through college, aided by student loans and a token scholarship. But when I got my first job, I changed my name. I hoped that would put the past behind me. I was wrong. It holds me as surely as if I were bound to it by ropes and chains—by a nightmare.”

  “But you’ve come a long way, Caroline. You’ve accomplished a lot, and you’re a damn good reporter.”

  “Don’t suck up to me, Sam. It’s not you, especially when I just got a young woman run off the road and seriously injured. And I have a killer who thinks he and I are partners in his sick game of slice and kill.”

  God, he ached to hold her. But he had no idea how she’d react to that now.

  “If you don’t have any more questions, I’m going now, Sam.”

  “Stay. We can go somewhere and talk, get a cup of coffee.”

  “No, thanks. I have work to do.”

  “You never said why you came to see me.”

  “Forget about it. It was probably just a dumb reporter idea, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry, Caroline. I never meant to hurt you.”

  “No one ever does. Besides, you were just doing your job, Detective. I’m just one of those reporters who got in your way.”

  CAROLINE WENT BACK to the office and tried to write up a human-interest article she’d spent the past two days researching—typical behavior patterns of serial killers. Her conclusion was that there were no typical behaviors, though the research itself had been fascinating and terrifying.

  Now she just couldn’t get into it. She shouldn’t have let Sam upset her like that. The surprise was that her name change hadn’t come out sooner. No one really got a chance to put their past behind them and start over.

  “Boy, do you look down.”

  “Oh, hi, Ron. I am down.”

  “Guess that serial killer case is getting to you, huh?”

  “It’s starting to.”

  “Murder sells newspapers.”

  “It appears that way,” Caroline said. “John has me doing a column now, a daily update on the progress that’s been made. Unfortunately that means I have to stretch nothing to at least eight inches of filler.”

  “It’s too bad about Trudy Mitchell.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “You seem to like her a lot. She must be really nice.”

  “I do like her. She’s young and pretty and scared half to death.”

  Ron nodded. “I bet, but I hear she’s got an armed guard at her door.”

  “She does for now. She’ll be going home soon, and I don’t know what’ll happen then.”

  Ron walked away and she went back to her writing. The whole town was talking about Trudy. All speculation, but apparently Ron had heard enough that he believed Trudy’s accident was tied to the serial killer. And if he’d figured that out, she was certain a lot of other people in town had figured it out, as well.

  It had been five days now since the man had killed his second victim. There had been five days between the first victim and the second. Was five days part of his pattern the way painting in blood was? Was tonight the night he’d kill again?

  HE STOOD in the shadows and watched Caroline as she walked out the door of the newspaper office and through the dark parking lot to her car. Five days since he’d killed. Five days since he’d watched the blood rush from a woman’s neck as he’d cut her throat.

  Strange, but he hadn’t expected to enjoy the killing as much as he had. In the beginning it had been just part of the plan. Now it was almost bigger than the plan. The kill itself was taking over his mind.

  He couldn’t keep it up forever. Sooner or later even a jerk like Sam Turner would get lucky and figure it out. But by then it would be too late. Too late for Sam. Too late for Caroline.

  Chapter Nine

  The killer didn’t strike on the fifth night or on the sixth. Nor had he contacted Caroline again. That was the good news. Sam Turner had not contacted her again, either. And that hurt.

  Caroline had thought about their confrontation a lot and come to the conclusion that Sam had been looking for an excuse not to deal with the attraction that sizzled between them. So he’d crawled back into his protective burrow where he could live with his photograph of Peg.

  Matt had tried to warn her the night he’d driven her to her car at the firing range. She hadn’t wanted to believe him, but he’d been right. So why couldn’t she get Sam out of her mind and get on with her life? It certainly wasn’t because she didn’t have enough other problems to deal with.

  John wanted something new and attention-grabbing from her every day, which meant she not only had to cover the routine Prentice news events, she had to find things to write about the two murders. That meant begging interviews from people who deserved their privacy and keeping the murderer on the front page. She was sure the creep loved that.

  And on top of everything else, she’d let Becky talk her into meeting at the Bon Appetit for lunch. Now she was here and the place was noisy and packed. But it smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg and baking bread. It was almost worth the trip over for the aromas.

  She stepped past a group of women waiting at the hostess desk and scanned the room for Becky. Her friend was standing by a table in the back, talking animatedly to a group of women. Actually, when Becky talked, it was always animatedly. She noticed Caroline and waved her over.

  “I saved us a table in the back,” Becky said, “so that I don’t have to stop and talk to everyone who comes in the door.”

  “You’re doing a booming business. Are you sure you have time to stop and have lunch?”

  “Absolutely. I’m the owner.”

  “If I were the owner, I’d have to be working. I should be, anyway. This will have to be a very quick lunch.”

  “You, my reporter friend, are turning into a real dud. I’m starting to be sorry I ever told you about the opening at the Times.
But you are gaining in notoriety.”

  “Not that I’ve noticed,” Caroline said, sitting down at the table Becky had reserved.

  “Then feast your ears on this. I got a call from a guy who writes for some big magazine. He wanted to know the inside scoop on Caroline Kimberly.”

  “What magazine?”

  Becky sat, unfolded her white linen napkin and arranged it over her lap. “I don’t remember. It wasn’t one I’d heard of before, but it sounded impressive. He’s writing an article about you and your work on the Prentice murders.”

  “When was this?”

  “Monday. I meant to call you, but I’ve been really busy the last couple of days.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth. That you’re smart, vivacious, sexy—and available.”

  “And you call that the truth?”

  “I do. And after that article gets printed, you’ll have guys coming to town just to meet you. But give Dave a chance before all these new guys start hitting on you. He really likes you, I can tell.”

  “Do me a favor, Becky.”

  “Sure.”

  “If the guy from the magazine calls again, get his name and number for me, but don’t give him any more information about me.”

  Becky looked stung. “I thought you’d be excited. Publicity is good. I can’t imagine why you’re upset.”

  Upset? Try horrified. The man who’d called Becky could be from a magazine. But he could be the killer. Drawn into Becky’s life just because she was Caroline’s friend. Only, how would he know about Becky?

  A smart man can find out anything.

  “I’m sorry, Caroline, really. I thought it was a good thing.”

  “It’s not your fault. The killings just have me spooked. But if he calls again, don’t talk to him. And definitely don’t agree to meet him anywhere. That’s very important, Becky.”

  “You’re frightening me.”

  “This just isn’t a time to be trusting strangers.”

  “Okay,” Becky said. “Now I have a little good news.”

  “Great. What is it?”