by Paula Graves
"Please don't do that, Detective."
Slowly she lifted her hands, shoulder high, and turned to face Dean Silor. Gripped solidly between steady hands, he held a snub-nosed revolver.
It would fire .38 caliber rounds, she knew. The striation on the bullets would match the handful of bullets they'd recovered from the Lovers' Lane murder scenes.
Congratulations, Hannigan, she thought as fear and anger rose in twin storms in the center of her chest. You've solved the Lovers' Lane murder."
Now how are you going to live to tell the tale?
Chapter Six
The loft was never truly quiet. Traffic in downtown Weatherford wasn't a steady stream after 10:00 p.m., but it never went away, thanks to overnight shift work in the nearby warehouse district, late-closing bars and early morning deliveries to restaurants and shops along the downtown strip.
Brody had lived in the loft since he returned to Alabama nearly a decade ago. He was used to the noise, the constant light that seeped through even the heaviest of curtains. Something of a night owl himself, thanks to occasional bouts of insomnia, he'd considered the inconveniences a trade-off for the sake of living right in the beating heart of the city. And sometimes, they blended together into a soporific white noise that helped him fall asleep when slumber was hard to find.
But not tonight. Tonight, the noises conspired to remind him of his partner, despite his dogged determination to put her out of his head.
The smell of bread wafting up from the bakery reminded him that she loved the croissants he brought her now and then as a treat. Oh, sure, she accused him of trying to make her fat and diabetic, but that was just Hannigan's way of saying thank you without coming across as smarmy or soft.
The rattle of a car engine dying across the street reminded him of that junky old Dodge Dart she'd been driving when they first met. It had probably been on its last legs when she'd bought it, and she'd driven it almost eight more years before it died right in the middle of rush hour two years ago. The curses and gestures they'd collected while waiting for the tow truck had been varied and colorful.
He lay on his back, stretched out on the sofa, and stared up at the play of lights on the ceiling high above. He was still fully clothed despite having been home for nearly an hour.
You're not planning to go back out tonight, are you? He knew the thoughts were his own, but he heard them in Hannigan's dry, skeptical tone.
"What's it to you?" he asked aloud, his voice echoing in the cavernous loft.
He pushed up to a sitting position, his gaze falling on the cell phone lying on the coffee table in front of him. It had gone into sleep mode long ago, but one touch would bring it back to life. A second touch would hit the speed dial for her cell phone, and then maybe he'd hear her voice one more time tonight.
"You are pathetic," he grumbled aloud.
He reached for the file folder sitting on the coffee table and pulled the chain on the floor lamp beside the sofa, spreading a golden glow of light around him. In the folder were all the notes he'd made during the early days of their investigation, trying to figure out what sort of mind would conceive of shooting passionate young lovers where they sat.
Sexual obsession, definitely, possibly expressed as repression. It was one reason he'd glommed onto Alvin Morehead so quickly—during their investigation of him as a person of interest, more than one neighbor had mentioned he was a socially-inept loner, whose interactions with women often left him tongue-tied and nervous.
Someone connected to Weatherford Community College, because so far at least one of each pair of victims had been a student at the college. Someone who could come and go at will during the evening hours. Someone with a vehicle.
Which covered just about everyone who attended the college, Brody thought bleakly.
Tamping down his growing frustration, he picked up the collage Hannigan had put together. There were no obvious social misfits in the class, now that poor Alvin Morehead was no longer among them. Of course, looks could be deceiving.
Still, he'd watched the interactions in the classroom during Dr. Flanders' lecture on the rather titillating subject of erotic literature versus puritan literature. Several of the male students had used the topic as an excuse to flirt with the pretty young co-eds in class. None of them had seemed embarrassed or disapproving of the subject matter. He'd observed them all carefully with his profile firmly in mind.
So either someone was covering his repression pretty well—or the killer wasn't in Dr. Flanders' Introduction to American Literature class at all.
Which left who? Another maintenance worker at the college? A clerical worker? Another member of the faculty?
Sexual obsession could also be expressed overtly, which brought him back to Dr. Sydney Flanders. He and Hannigan had been leaning toward a male assailant because all the bodies had been moved after death. The killer posed the bodies by draping the victims out of the car, their heads lying on the ground outside the open car doors.
But dragging a body halfway out of a car wasn't impossible for a female. And Dr. Flanders was a tall, fit woman. Her assistant might be as well, for all they knew.
So what was it? What was motivating the killer? Sexual obsession, as he'd surmised when trying to fit Dr. Flanders into the profile? Or the opposite, a prudish aversion to open sexual expression?
A memory nibbled at the edge of Brody's mind. Prim words, spoken with distaste. Students seem to believe the time they should spend matriculating is better spent fornicating.
Dr. Raymond Silor?
The back of his neck tingled. Silor was older than expected, but for a man his age, he had seemed strong and relatively spry. He seemed to fit the bill if the killer's sexual obsession expressed itself in repression.
He certainly had access to highly personal information about the students under his tutelage.
Automatically, Brody reached for the cell phone and dialed Hannigan's number, a bubble of excitement growing in the center of his chest, spreading until it burst in a flash of inspiration. Could it be Dean Silor?
Could the answer be that simple?
Five rings, then voicemail.
That was odd. Hannigan never turned off her phone, and she never let it ring. She either answered it or hit ignore. She took the phone into the bathroom with her when she showered. Kept it by her bed during the night. He'd called her in the middle of the night more times than he could count and she always, always answered.
Was she so determined not to talk to him now that she was willing to break her phone rules? If so, then the partnership they'd had all these years had been ruined already.
No. He wasn't going to let her cut him off this way. If necessary, he could control his sex drive around her. He could be a freakin' Boy Scout if that's what she wanted. But he had a break in the murder case, and she was damned well going to talk to him about it.
He was halfway down the steps to the parking garage when he realized there might be another answer. Maybe her cell phone was out of order. It was a rarity—their service carrier had already tasted the wrath of a pissed-off Hannigan once and was in no hurry to experience it again. But considering the late hour, he should at least try her landline.
He tried her home number and got a busy signal. So maybe she was on the landline with her mother or maybe one of her brothers. Maybe she hadn't been able to reach her cell phone before it went to voice mail.
Either way, he needed to talk to her. Tonight.
He reached the Taurus and unlocked it with the remote, thumbing the speed dial number for Hannigan's cell as he slid behind the steering wheel. Five rings and voice mail again.
Frustrated, he dropped the phone on the seat beside him. The seat Hannigan usually occupied.
He stopped trying to be logical. That was her job. Instead he listened to his gut.
Something was wrong. He could feel it.
"I suppose I could have waited you out." Raymond Silor's voice was freakishly calm, his hand remarkably steady as he
leveled the snub nose of the Smith & Wesson 638. She saw that he'd taken her landline off the hook. "You and your partner really had no clue, did you?"
"Why didn't you wait?" she asked. "Why show yourself now? We couldn't have stayed undercover forever. You could have killed right under our noses and we wouldn't have figured it out," she said.
Except they would have. Even now, she realized, she wasn't entirely surprised to discover the dean was their killer. He fit the profile, she supposed, as well as Alvin Morehead ever had. Unmarried—no band on his left finger, a fussiness of demeanor more common to lifelong bachelors than married men. Definitely connected to Weatherford Community College. A fastidious disdain for the carnal—he'd expressed his disapproval of his young, sex-obsessed charges in their very first meeting. He'd even scolded her, politely, about the racy attire she'd worn Monday night.
He never had told her when he'd seen her in that outfit, had he? She'd assumed he'd been on campus that night, but she hadn't noticed him. Had he followed her and Brody that night?
Her heart dipped wildly.
Had he followed them tonight?
"It's really quite fascinating, you know. Watching you put all the pieces together. A bit too slowly to be of much use to you, of course." His smile was touched with disappointment. "Addled by your lust for your partner, I suppose."
Heat burned her cheeks. Had he been at Magnolia Park tonight, watching them? Had he seen—?
"You have no appreciation what we work so hard to offer young people, do you? The hours of devotion to study, the money spent and the lives dedicated to learning. Did you attend college yourself, detective?"
She cleared the lump of fear from her throat. "Yes."
He arched an eyebrow. "State school?"
Anger added a spark to the answering look she shot his way. "Yes. One a bit more prestigious than a community college."
Anger flashed in his pale eyes. "Touché, my dear. Though I assume you must have attended on scholarship, since your parents could hardly afford to send you."
Fury burned a path up her neck. "Full academic scholarship, you snobbish little prick."
He laughed. "So much potential, wasted on pursuits of the flesh." He shook his head. "I don't enjoy this, you know."
"Of course you do," she snapped.
"I would much rather the young people of the world behave as if they actually appreciated the opportunities afforded them. So many people in the world, with no chance for learning, no chance of advancing themselves from their hellish lives—"
"So you consider your students ingrates?"
He looked up at her with earnest eyes. "Don't you?
In some ways, she supposed, she did. She'd had to struggle hard to get anywhere in her life. Worked afternoon jobs to help finance her hopes for a college education, studied hard and always went the extra mile for a step up. It had grated on her, sometimes, to see her less motivated and less financially-strapped fellow students laugh at any attempt to cajole them into greater achievement.
But she'd never pulled out a gun and shot any of them.
"You do understand," he said softly. "I see it in your eyes. Which is why I really don't understand the choices you've made, my dear. You seem to be a true aficionada of the learning arts. I saw it in you that first day we met. You were irritated with your partner, but I saw the interest. The intrigue with what you might learn."
"What choices have I made that don't meet your approval?"
He shook his head, looking genuinely regretful. "Your carnal lust for your partner, my dear. It oozes from you like an infection. I can smell it on you now." His eyes narrowed. "I smell him on you now."
Hannigan's skin crawled.
Within eight minutes, Brody turned down Rosedale Drive, toward Hannigan's pretty little bungalow in the middle of the block. He started to pull into the driveway, but something stopped him short.
Something wasn't right.
He drove on to the end of the block and turned around in a neighbor's driveway. He came back up the street slowly, taking in his surroundings. What was different?
There. A sedan parked two doors down from Hannigan's bungalow. Dark blue Lexus. No identifying stickers or parking decals visible.
He backed up until he could read the license plate. Cutting the engine, he pulled a penlight from his pocket and flashed the narrow beam on the tag. He dialed the office number and got a night officer. "This is Brody, badge number 10301979. Run these plates for me." He read the number and waited, his gaze moving to the front of Hannigan's house.
There was a light on in the living room. He saw no sign of movement, though he spotted a faint, shadowy outline that might be a person standing a few feet from the front window.
The night officer came back with the answer. "Plates are registered to a Raymond James Silor." He rattled off an address. "No warrants, no priors."
No priors, Brody thought, unless you count eight murders.
"I need a back-up unit to 432 Rosedale Drive. No lights or sirens. Now." He hung up the phone and got out of the car, his gaze fixed on the unmoving shadow in Hannigan's front window. Was it her? Or him?
He looked at his cell phone. Heart pounding with restless anticipation, he pushed the speed dial for Hannigan's number and prayed this time she'd answer.
"You smell him on me?" Hannigan didn't know whether Silor was speaking figuratively or literally. Could be either, she guessed, since she and Brody had certainly been tangled up intimately little more than an hour ago.
"I know what you were doing tonight." His eyes shone with the passionate fervor of a high inquisitor. "I was close enough to see your reckless abandon, my dear. I could have taken a shot, had I wished."
Her skin crawled again, but this time with seething anger. The perverted little creep had spied on her and Brody? Really? And what he'd seen in that car had been egregious enough to stir him to the edge of murder?
Hell, they hadn't even made it past first base. Some killing offense!
"You're a sick little man," she said recklessly, though not without purpose as well. She stalked past where he sat on the sofa, heading toward the kitchen. It was a brazen move, and she knew she might end up with a bullet in her back, but she needed him off guard, just for a second.
Just long enough to slip her hand in her pocket and hit the answer button on her phone. Her phone was in the pocket of her jeans. It had vibrated now three times in the last five minutes, too quiet to be heard but the vibration strong enough that she felt it through the denim.
There. The vibration stopped on the second pulse.
Please be Brody, she thought.
"Stop right there." Silor's voice held a thread of steel, reminding her, not for the first time, that a mild-mannered facade could be deeply deceiving.
She stopped and moved back toward him, her hands once again raised. She made sure to position herself so that the pocket holding her phone was nearest him and hoped that whoever had called—please God, let it be Brody—could hear Silor more clearly. "I'm stopped." She cocked her head. "Why didn't you just shoot me? What are you waiting for?"
"Your partner," he answered.
"What are you going to do, make up some excuse to lure him here? I suppose you want me to call him?"
"Exactly what I want."
"What if I can't reach him?"
Silor's smile was a leer. "I believe you know exactly what to do to lure your partner here, don't you, Detective?"
Brody hadn't known what to expect when he'd tried his partner's cell phone one more time. But the sound of Silor's voice barking an order to stop or he'd shoot wasn't it.
Son of a bitch.
"Why didn't you just shoot me? What are you waiting for?" That was Hannigan's voice, muffled but strong. Brody's heart started beating again.
"Your partner," Silor answered.
"What are you going to do, make up some excuse to lure him here? I suppose you want me to call him?" Hannigan asked.
"Exactly what I want."
No need, Brody thought with a grim smile. I called her first, you creepy little shit.
"What if I can't reach him?" Hannigan asked.
Even through the filter of the jeans pocket—Hannigan always put her cell phone in her pants pocket—Brody heard the salacious tenor of Silor's reply. "I believe you know exactly what to do to lure your partner here, don't you, Detective?"
Brody shuddered with rage. Had he been there tonight, at Magnolia Park? Had he been spying on them?
He eased closer to the bungalow porch, wishing he had a way to let Hannigan know he was hearing her, loud and clear. But any noise he might make would give him away to Silor as well.
"Fine. You want me to call him? I'll call him. But you're not going to like what happens when he gets here."
Brody smiled grimly at the conviction in his partner's voice. She always had possessed far more confidence in his heroic qualities than he'd ever felt himself.
He'd move heaven and earth to live up to her expectations.
"I need to cross to the phone," Hannigan said. Brody's fading smile broadened again. She was going for the landline, which was a brilliant move. She couldn't be sure he was the one who'd called her cell phone, not if it were hidden in the pocket of her jeans. But if he wasn't the person hanging on the other end of the line, calling him using her landline was a sure signal that something was wrong. She never used her landline; in fact, she'd often threatened to get rid of it altogether, so seldom did she use it.
"I'll listen in."
Damn. He had to hang up his cell phone or she wouldn't be able to reach him. If Silor was listening in, he'd know if Brody didn't answer, and from what their profile told them about the Lovers' Lane killer, any change to his carefully scripted plans would send the man into entirely unpredictable territory.
But disconnecting that tenuous cord of connection between him and his imperiled partner was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do.
