The Beginning

by Catherine Coulter

  “I hope this is of assistance to you, but given the reason for your request I doubt that you are overjoyed. My best to Savich.”

  Savich said nothing, merely took in her pallor, the stark disappointment in her eyes, the hopelessness that seemed to be draining her. He wished it could be different, but it wasn’t. He said finally, “Burt said it himself. Inconclusive. It doesn’t nail down the coffin lid, Sherlock.”

  “I know,” she said and didn’t sound as though she believed it. “He didn’t write this in his letter, but Mr. York said on the phone a few minutes ago that all the same particulars with the other murder props were completely identical. It was only with murder number four where there were inconsistencies.”

  “That’s something,” Savich said. “Look, Sherlock, either Marlin did it or he didn’t. As to Marlin claiming he killed only six women in San Francisco, Belinda not included, then someone else did. You’re not happy, are you?”

  She shook her head. “I wanted to be certain once and for all and it’s still not proven, either way. Can you think of anything else to do?” But she didn’t look at him, just stared down at her low-heeled navy pumps.

  “Not at the moment, but I’ll think about it some more. Now let’s get back to the Radnich case.” He wished he could let her mull over her sister’s murder, but there were too many demands on the Unit. He needed her.

  “Yes. Thank you for giving me all this time. Ollie also said there was a new murder spree, a couple of black guys killing Asian people in Alabama and Mississippi.”

  “Yes. We’ll talk about it in the meeting this afternoon.” He watched her leave his office. He tapped his pen on the desktop. She’d lost weight she couldn’t afford to lose. He didn’t like it. Even though he saw the results of it in the families of victims, he still couldn’t begin to imagine what it must feel like to have lost someone you loved in such a horrible way. He shook himself. He turned to MAXINE and typed in a brief note to his friend James Quinlan, pressed send.

  Sherlock stopped outside his office, leaned against the wall. It was too much and not nearly enough. She had to go to Boston again. She had to speak to Marlin Jones one more time. She had to make him tell her the truth. She had to. She looked up to see Hannah staring at her. “Why are you so pale? You look like someone’s punched you. Actually, you look like you’re coming down with the flu.”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine. It’s the case I’m working on. Things are inconclusive and I hate that.”

  Hannah said, “Yes, that’s always a bitch, isn’t it? How’s your arm?”

  “What? Oh, my arm’s fine.”

  “How are you feeling after that hit-and-run driver nearly hit you the other day? That must have been pretty bad.”

  “It was, but not as bad as this. I think it was an accident, some drunk guy who probably was so scared that he nearly hit someone that he couldn’t wait to roar away from me. The cops said the three numbers I saw on the license plate didn’t lead anywhere. Too many possibilities. It could have happened to anybody. I was just the lucky one.”

  “Did you hurt your arm again?”

  “Banged it up a bit more, no big deal.”

  “Dillon isn’t busy now, is he?”

  “I don’t know.” She walked away, thinking about who had had access to all the crime details in San Francisco.

  She sat at her desk and stared at the blank computer screen. She heard a sound and turned to see Hannah standing by the water cooler, frowning at her. It was more than a frown, and Sherlock felt a brief burst of cold run through her. She forced herself back to the Radnich case, but there was nothing new there. Another murder and her old-woman theory hadn’t washed. The afternoon meeting was canceled because Savich had an emergency meeting with Jimmy Maitland. She was still puzzling over the newest developments in the Mississippi/Alabama cases, when she heard Savich behind her. “It’s after six. It’s time for you to hang it up. Let’s go work out.”

  She stared up at him blankly. “Work out?”

  “Yeah, I bet you haven’t moved from that desk since this afternoon. Come along. I won’t throw you around because you have this wimp excuse about your arm.”

  SHE could barely walk. Nor could she talk. She was still using all her breath to pull oxygen into her lungs. It was just as well because Hannah Paisley turned up before they were ready to leave. She looked fit and strong, and every guy in the gym was staring at her. She was wearing a hot-pink leotard with a black top and black thong.

  Savich gave Hannah a salute as he said, “Come on, Sherlock. I told you you’ve got to work on your breathing. More breath or you’ll collapse on me the way you’re almost doing now.”

  She eyed him and gasped out, “I’m going to kill you.”

  “Good. An entire sentence. You’re getting it together again. You want to go shower?”

  “I’d drown. I’d fall down, plug the drain, and that would be the end of it.”

  “Then let’s walk home. A nice walk dries all the sweat.”

  “I want to be carried. These legs aren’t going anywhere on their own.”

  Hannah was standing behind Savich. She lightly touched her fingers to his bare arm. His skin glistened with sweat.

  “Hello, Dillon, Sherlock.”

  Lacey only nodded. She was still breathing hard.

  “You’re looking good, Hannah,” Savich said. Sherlock realized at that moment how clear it was to her that they’d slept together. They were both magnificently made, beautiful specimens. She could imagine how they’d look together, naked, all over each other. She forced herself to smile. To look the way the two of them did, they had to sweat a lot to build those sleek muscles. Sherlock wasn’t too fond of sweating. She watched Dillon squeeze Hannah’s biceps. “Not bad. Look at poor Sherlock here. She’s threatening to collapse on me all because she got her arm hurt and we had to spend the time on her legs.”

  “She does look a bit on the edge. While she rests up, could you come coach me a minute on my bench presses?”

  “Sorry, not tonight, Hannah. Sherlock has to get home, and I promised I’d drop her off.”

  Hannah nodded, smiled at both of them, and walked off, every man’s eyes, except Dillon’s, on her butt.

  “She’s very beautiful,” Sherlock said, pleased she could talk without wondering if she was having a heart attack.

  “Yes, I guess so,” Savich said. “Let’s go.”

  They stopped for a half-veggie, half-sausage pizza at Dizzy Dan’s on Clayton Street.

  “You only left me two slices,” Savich said, picking up one slice quickly. “You’re a pig, Sherlock.”

  Cheese was dripping down her chin. She was so hungry, she was pleased she hadn’t started chewing on the red-and-white checkered tablecloth. She quickly grabbed the last slice. It was still hot enough so that the cheese pulled loose and dripped down the sides of the slice. She couldn’t wait to get it into her mouth. “Order another one,” she said, her mouth full.

  He did, and this garden delight pizza he ate himself. She was so full she didn’t want to move, didn’t even want to raise her hand from the tabletop.

  “You stuffed?”

  “To the gills.” She sighed, sat back in her chair, and crossed her arms over her stomach. “I didn’t realize I was so hungry.”

  “If Marlin didn’t kill Belinda, then someone else did. Who was it, Sherlock?”

  “I don’t know, truly, I don’t.”

  “But you’ve been thinking about it a whole lot, ever since Marlin told you he didn’t kill her. Who had access, Sherlock? Who?”

  “Why don’t we talk about Florida instead? Or Mississippi?”

  “Fine, but you’re going to have to face up to it soon. I do have some new information from Florida for you. The latest murder wasn’t on the projected map matrix, as you already know. MAXINE is trying to come up with something else. We poor humans are trying too. This time the police made an effort to question everyone in sight. They herded all the residents into the rec room. Th
ey wanted to catch your old woman in disguise. The initial word I got back, and what you heard, was that it wasn’t someone disguised as an old woman. However, I found out before we left this afternoon that a new cop had had two of the old folks get sick on him because of the murder and he’d let them go. One was an old woman, one an old man. Was one of them the murderer? No one knows.

  “As for the new young cop being able to identify the two old people, we can forget it. All old people look alike to him. He remembers that one was an old man and he fainted; the other was an old lady and she puked. You can bet your life that he got his ears pinned back, probably worse.

  “So, it’s still unclear whether or not your theory is right. You know, the likeliest person to kill a wife is the husband.”

  He’d steered so smoothly back on course that the words spilled out of her mouth: “No, Dillon, Douglas loved Belinda. All right, for argument’s sake, let’s say that I’m wrong and he hated her. He would simply have divorced her. There’s no reason he would have killed her. He’s not stupid, nor, I doubt strongly, is he a murderer. There was no reason for him to kill her, none at all.”

  “No, not that you know of. But one thing, Sherlock, he does seem to think too much of you, his sister-in-law. How long has he been looking at you, licking his chops?”

  “I’m sure that’s recent. And I think he’s over it now.” She remembered him staring at hers and Belinda’s photos in her bedroom—all that he’d remembered, all that he’d said about her innocence. She felt a knot of coldness settle deep into her. She was shaking her head even as she added, “No, not Douglas.”

  “Your daddy’s a judge, but he wasn’t a judge seven years ago. He couldn’t have had access to everything on the String Killer case.”

  She wondered only briefly how he knew that, but then wanted to laugh at herself. That was easy stuff. Actually she wouldn’t be surprised if Savich knew what the president’s next speech would be about. She had complete faith that MAXINE could access anything Savich wanted. “No, impossible. Don’t lie to me. I’ll bet you know my father did have access to everything. He came out of the D.A.’s office. He knew everyone. He could have accessed anything he wanted. But Dillon, how could a man kill his own daughter? And so brutally?”

  “It’s been done more times than I can remember. Your dad’s not all that straightforward a guy, Sherlock, and Belinda wasn’t his daughter. He appears to have this mean streak in him. He didn’t much like Belinda, did he? He thought she was nuts, like his wife, who claimed that he’d tried to run her down in his BMW.”

  She scooted out of the booth, the tablecloth snagging on her purse strap. His two remaining slices of pizza nearly slid off the table.

  “Then there’s Mama. Does she have mental problems, Sherlock? What did she think of Belinda?”

  He was standing there in front of her, very close, and she couldn’t stand it. “I’m going home. You don’t have to see me there.”

  “Yeah, I do. You’ve got to do some thinking. You know very well Burt York has sent his findings to the SFPD. They might reopen Belinda’s case or they might not. No way of telling yet. At the very least though, everything we’re talking about they’ll be talking about too. Douglas could be in some warm water, Sherlock, no matter how you slice it. Daddy too.”

  “Since everything is so inconclusive, it’s very possible the San Francisco police won’t do a thing. I think once they talk to Boston, they’ll know it was Marlin. They won’t have any doubts. They’ll shake their heads at Burt’s report.”

  “I think they will pay some attention. We’re all the law. We’re all supposed to try to catch the bad guys, even if it might mean opening a can of worms.”

  “I’ve got to call Douglas, warn him. This can’t be right, it can’t. I never meant for this to happen.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Maybe I’ll understand you in another thirty years, Sherlock. Do what you must. Come on. I’ve got things to do tonight.”

  “Like what?”

  “My friend James Quinlan plays the sax at the Bonhomie Club on Houtton Street, owned by a Ms. Lily, a super-endowed black lady who admires his butt and his soulful eyes as much as his playing. He tries to be there at least once or twice a week. Sally, his wife, loves the place. Marvin, the bouncer, calls her Chicky. Come to think of it, he calls every female Chicky. But Sally to him is a really nice Chicky. I’ll never forget that Fuzz the bartender gave them a bottle of wine for a wedding present. It had a cork. A first. Amazing.”

  Now all this was strange. She said slowly, willing, happy to be distracted, even if only for a moment, “So you go to support him?”

  He looked suddenly embarrassed. He didn’t meet her eyes. He cleared his throat and said, “Yeah.”

  He was lying. She cocked her head to one side. “Maybe I could go with you sometime? I wouldn’t mind supporting him either. Also, I’ve never gotten together with Sally Quinlan. I heard she’s an aide to a senator.”

  “Yeah. Okay, sure. Maybe. We’ll see.”

  She didn’t say a word. They were nearly at her town house. There was a quarter moon showing through gothic clouds—all thin and wispy, floating past, making sinister images. It was only eight-thirty in the evening, cool with only a slight breeze. “You should keep a light on.”

  “The FBI doesn’t pay me all that well, Dillon. It would cost a fortune.”

  “Do you have an alarm system?”

  “No. Why? All of a sudden you’re worried? You were mocking all my locks just a while ago.”

  “Yeah, and I wondered why someone who faced down Marlin like a first-class warrior would need to have more locks in her house than the president has guards.”

  “They’re two very different things.”

  “I figured that. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me about it, will you?”

  “There’s nothing to tell. Now, what’s all this about an alarm system?”

  “Someone tried to run you down. That changes things, big-time.”

  They were back to that. “It was an accident.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Good night, Dillon.”

  TWENTY

  Lacey unlocked the front door and stepped into the small foyer. She reached for the light switch and turned it on. It flickered, and then the light strengthened. She turned to lock the front door—the dead bolt, the two chains. From habit, she looked into the living room, the kitchen, before she went to her bedroom. Everything was as it should be.

  She stopped suddenly. Slowly, she lowered the gym shoe she’d just pulled off to the floor. She turned, silent as stone now, and listened. Nothing.

  She was losing it. She remembered that long-ago night in her fourth-floor apartment when she’d awakened to hear noises and nearly heaved up her guts with terror. Then she’d gotten a grip and gone out to see what or who was there. It had been a mouse. A silly little mouse, so scared he didn’t know where to run when he saw her. And that had been the night she’d changed.

  She took off the rest of her gym clothes and went into the bathroom. Just before she stepped into the shower, she turned the lock on the door, laughing aloud at herself while she did it. “You’re an idiot,” she said, unlocked the door, then stepped into the shower.

  Hot, hot water. It felt like heaven. Dillon had nearly killed her, but the hot water was soaking in. She could feel her shrieking leg muscles groan in relief. He’d told her that working out kept his stress level down. It also gave him a gorgeous body, but she didn’t tell him that. She was beginning to wonder if he didn’t have something about bringing down the stress. For the hour they’d exercised, she hadn’t given a single thought to Marlin Jones or to the inconclusive report from Wild Burt York.

  She finally stepped out of the shower some ten minutes later and into the fog-heavy bathroom. She wrapped a thick Egyptian-cotton towel around her head, then used the corner of her other towel to wipe the mirror.

  She stared into the masked face right behind her.

  A yell clogged in her throat
. She froze. She realized she wasn’t breathing, couldn’t breathe, until air whooshed out of her mouth.

  The man said in a soft, low voice that feathered warm air on the back of her neck, “Don’t move now, little girl. I expected you to come home a bit later. You seemed well ensconced at that pizza place with that big guy. What’s the matter, didn’t the guy push hard enough to sleep with you? I could tell he wanted to, just the way he was looking at you. You told him no, didn’t you? Yeah, you’re here a little earlier than I expected, but no matter. I had a chance to settle in, get to know you a bit.”

  His mask was black. His breathing was quiet, his voice so very soft, unalarming. She felt the gun pressing lightly against the small of her back. She was naked, no weapon, nothing except a ridiculous towel wrapped around her head.

  “That’s right. You’re holding perfectly still. Are you afraid I’ll rape you?”

  “I don’t know. Will you?”

  “I hadn’t thought to, but seeing you all buck naked, well, you’re good-looking, you know? It turned me on to hear you singing that country-western song in the shower. What was it?”

  “‘King of the Road.’”

  “I like those words—but they fit me, not you. You’re just a little girl playing cop. The king of the road goes to Maine when he’s all done, right? That’s where I might go once I’m through with you.”

  Slowly, very slowly, she brought the towel down in front of her. “May I please wrap the towel around me?”

  “No, I like looking at you. Drop it on the floor. Leave the one wrapped around your head. I like that too. It makes you look exotic. It turns me on.”

  She dropped the towel. She felt the gun pressing cold and hard against her spine. She’d had training, but what could she do? She was naked, without a weapon, in her bathroom. What could she possibly do? Talk to him; that was her best chance, for the moment. “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk you into going back to him, all the way back to San Francisco.”

  “Did you try to run me down?”