by Jenna Ryan
Inspired, he scrolled for another ten minutes, checked his watch and swore again. No time now for a deeper search of the New York news. He should have called Devon an hour ago.
He tried the cell phone he’d given her and had to snatch the receiver away from his ear when a woman’s voice, Alma’s, he suspected, spit a furious, “Listen up, whoever you are. You’re—stop it, Devon, I’m trying to help. You’re nothing more than a sniveling little worm, telephoning threats, quoting Christmas songs. It’s sacrilege, and you have no—Devon, stop it, I’m...”
“Hello?” Devon’s voice came on the line.
Jacob judged her greeting. Flat. Annoyed. Frightened. “It’s me, Devon.” A concerned ridge formed between his eyes. “What happened?”
“He called me,” she said calmly, “with another warnring.”
A sliver of fear, razor-sharp, whizzed along his spine.
“He said it was the last verse the angels would sing for me.”
Jacob was already halfway into his jacket. “Are you still at Alma’s?”
“Yes.”
She sounded zapped, shocky. He didn’t like it. “Stay there. Do you hear me? Devon?”
“I hear you... Riker?”
He wanted to leave. “What?”
Her breath hitched slightly. “He said something else. He told me—” She firmed up the quaver in her voice. “He told me that a dead rat is a good rat; a picture is worth a thousand words; curiosity isn’t the only thing that can kill a cat on its ninth life; love and angels don’t mix, and...” she drew a deep, steadying breath. “trained illusionists aren’t the only ones who can make people disappear.”
“RUDY?” Bewildered, Mandy followed the smell of cigarette smoke to the den. She spied the glowing tip and, with a hot pink fingernail, flicked on the overhead light. “What are you doing, sitting like a zombie in the dark?”
His chin rested on his chest, loosening the skin of his throat even more than usual. His head bobbed up at her entry.
Anger flew. “Are you okay, Rude?” Dropping her parcels, she went to her knees beside him. He looked like a ninety-year-old man. She touched his gray hair. “Is it Jacob, Devon, what?”
He shook his head. “It’s everything. It’s sick, Mandy, that someone, anyone, could be so screwed in the head.”
She eased the cordless phone from his tight fingers and set it aside. “The world’s full of sickos, Rude. You can be a cop and try to round them up, but you’ll never be rid of them.”
His eyes met hers, flat and tired. “He’s gonna do it soon; every gut instinct I’ve got is screaming that at me. Dugan’s busy, doing the drill with a possible suicide; Jacob’s digging and Devon’s a sitting duck at Alma’s cocktail party. It’s a crock, I tell you.”
There was something more here, Mandy decided. Something raw and unpleasant, gnawing away at those gut instincts of his. She prodded a little, squeezed his calloused hand. “What’s in your head, Rude? I can’t quite see it.”
His free hand crawled around his neck. “Neither can I. Something, though. Jacob’s tracking someone who used to be called the Morning Angel. Ever heard of her?”
Mandy searched her memory. “No bells on that one. Sorry.”
Rudy tapped the nape of his neck. “I got a light going off back here. She’s someone, or was. But not recently.”
“You could use your computer. Well,” she amended. “Jacob could.” Determination set in. “Hell, why not?” She stood, took hold of his wrist. “Let’s give it a whirl ourselves. We may be pathetic hackers individually, but who knows what we might accomplish together? You game?”
Rudy’s eyes darkened briefly, then an odd sort of smile stole across his lips. “Yeah, sure. Why not?” Rising, he reached for the iron poker on the hearth beside him. “I’ll get this fire back to speed while you boot up the computer.” His fingers clenched around the smooth handle. “Maybe one of us’ll get lucky at that.”
HOW COULD IT only be 7:00 p.m.? Unbelieving, Devon stared at the dashboard clock. Time must be standing still.
A chill swept through her, and she rubbed her arms under her coat. “Where are we going?” she asked Riker as he skidded his Blazer through a snow-covered intersection. “Not to the apartment apparently.”
“No, not there.” He glanced over. “Are you sure you’re not in shock?”
“From a telephone threat?” She angled her chin. “Absolutely not. I’m sick of this nightmare and, I’ll admit, terrified down to my bones, but I’m also mad as hell at whoever’s behind all of it.”
And that was precisely as far as she was prepared to go in terms of thought and of conjecture. Riker hadn’t been with her when the Christmas Murderer had telephoned. The murderer had called her on Riker’s cell phone. Who, besides Riker, had known she was carrying it? Anyone who cared to know, that’s who. He’d handed it to her outside the apartment building this morning. Half the city could have seen the exchange if they’d chosen to set up a watch.
So there was no reason for her to acknowledge the tendrils of suspicion twisting around in her stomach. No reason at all.
Devon used her strong feelings for Riker to keep the worst of her mistrust firmly at bay. She scanned the snowy streets and endeavored to identify the neighborhood.
“This is where Jimmy lives.” She recognized one of the corner signs. “Why here?”
Riker maneuvered his vehicle over a patch of rutted ice. “Because he disappeared, and I want to know why.”
“Angel,” Devon murmured. “Angela. I wonder if Barret’s real?”
“What?”
“People don’t always use their given names in radio. Often don’t,” she amended. “It’s a privacy thing.”
“Not for you.”
She shrugged. “I’m not a private person. I’m also not listed in the phone book and my computer’s not hooked up to the Internet. Waters isn’t Teddi’s last name.”
Riker approximated the location of the curb. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted.
“There was no reason for you to. Besides, I doubt if it’s significant.”
“It could be on an official level. She’d be entered by her legal surname in the police computer files. I used the New York Times to track her down. I should have had—well, let’s say I should have gone the official route.”
Preoccupied with the crumbling old house before them, Devon nodded. “I think Jimmy told me once that his place was split into three units. It doesn’t look like any of the tenants are home.”
Riker followed her gaze upward. “That’ll make it easier then, won’t it?”
“Meaning you don’t have a warrant.”
He braved the storm, then stuck his head back in, collar upturned against the shrieking wind. “Do you want to wait or come?”
“I’ll come.”
“I thought you might.”
Counted on it more like. Tempted to pull out her hair, Devon took Riker’s hand instead, hopped into the snow and accompanied him to the front of the converted house.
He went to work at once on the lock. “Piece of cake,” he said from his knees. “Keep an eye out, okay?”
Devon’s teeth chattered as she hopped discreetly from foot to foot. Her mind moved in spurts from question to question, dark thought to darker thought.
She loved Riker, that was not a question. But, God help her, what if...?
“Got it.” He nudged gently, and the door squeaked open. A cold, dark hallway greeted them. Lights helped, but weren’t sufficient to dispel the gloom.
“This place could use some help from the Home Pro.” Devon wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Why are rental houses always so depressing?”
“Because the owners live in Germantown and don’t have to see them every day. Jimmy’s mail box says he’s on two.”
Two minutes and another picked lock later, she stared in dismay at the stained carpet, faded furniture, gouged tables and split seat cushions.
“I don’t think it was tossed,” Riker said, h
is gaze circling the living area. “He’s a slob, though.”
Devon wandered over to the desk. “He came back here the day he ran out of my office. These station faxes are dated and initialed. No picture, though.”
Riker flipped through a stack of file folders. “Picture of what?”
“Whoever that man was he showed me.”
“What? Oh, that.”
Leaving him, Devon drifted into the kitchen. Dregs of coffee in a cracked mug; coffee pot, half full, in the machine. Both stone cold.
Dirty dishes littered the sink and countertops. The herbs in their window pots looked healthy if a little sparse. The fridge was partially stocked and included a Cornish hen which he must have been planning to eat on Christmas Day.
A flurry of guilt pangs attacked. Devon had no idea whether Jimmy had family in Philadelphia or not. She should know, should have asked.
“Anything?” she inquired, returning to the living room.
“Nothing I can tell.”
Devon replaced the rosary beads she’d discovered next to Jimmy’s answering machine. No messages, she noticed and felt another twinge. Did Jimmy have friends, or had he withdrawn into himself when the young woman he’d loved had died?
Not a cheerful thought, she decided, stuffing her hands in her coat pockets. “We’re wasting our time here, Riker, to say nothing of invading Jimmy’s privacy. I think we should go.”
“I agree.” He never had removed his gloves, she noted. Neither had she. A reflex action? Devon wouldn’t put much past her subconscious mind at this point.
“Alma says I’m not paranoid,” she told Riker when they were back in his Blazer. “I’m not so sure about that. I’m having trouble trusting people. Any people,” she added with a meaningful sideways glance.
No offence registered on his shadowed face. “It’s an understandable reaction. I’ve been feeling like that myself lately.”
The admission jarred. “Toward Rudy, you mean?”
He concentrated on the road. “I’ve known him forever, Devon. He was a good cop, still is. But I wonder sometimes where he is, what he’s doing, even what he’s thinking.”
“And you feel like slime for doing it.” Devon understood the contrary emotions, all too well.
She flicked at her bangs. “Where to now?”
“Home for you.” Riker held up a hand to forestall her heated protest. “I’m only going to Rudy’s. You’re better off with Hannah tonight. Dugan—we’ve stationed a uniform outside the apartment. I’ll feel better if you stay there,” he added, well aware that the emotional angle would make arguing her case impossible.
“I suppose Hannah and I could take turns helping each other pack.” Devon’s shoulders sagged. “All right.”
When they arrived at the apartment building, Riker left her in the warm Blazer and jogged through the snow to an unmarked car. She saw the cop inside grin and punch his arm. Nice that someone could find humor in a situation like this. She wouldn’t care to spend her evening sitting in a cold car, staring at a windblown street. Maybe she’d sneak the cop some sandwiches and coffee after Riker left.
“Houdini couldn’t get in,” Hannah insisted five minutes later. “Everything’s locked tight.”
Riker kissed Devon in the hallway, not gently as she’d anticipated but in a somewhat desperate fashion. He fingered a strand of her hair as his troubled eyes stared into hers.
“I love you, Devon.” Another, briefer, kiss. “Remember that.”
He was out the door before she could open her mouth to reply. With a sigh, she pressed a brooding palm to the door frame. Damn her suspicious mind. Why couldn’t she shed those last niggling doubts and simply love him the way her heart longed to? Why did life refuse to cooperate?
She lingered in the hallway, allowed her gaze to travel up the softly illuminated staircase, past her floor and Andrew’s to the upper railing where Riker currently resided.
She’d been inside his apartment, had decorated his Christmas tree. No secrets lurked there waiting for her to find them. Only an unopened bottle of burgundy that they’d forgotten to bring downstairs last night.
She hesitated, considered, then called to Hannah. “Do you want some wine?”
“I’d love a glass.” Hannah appeared, tying on her Christmas apron. “I was going to cook us some risotto. I thought we could watch A Christmas Carol like we used to when we were kids.”
Sidetracked, Devon smiled. “Do you have almond cookies?”
“Always. Where’s the wine?”
“It’s—” She glanced upward one last time, then hunched her shoulders and made her decision. “I’ll get it.” Maybe she was a cat at that.
She climbed, lead-footed, despising her intentions. She had a pass key to all the apartments. She glanced sideways on three. Maybe she should check out Andrew’s place while she was up here.
Riker’s rooms were cool and smelled of latex paint. Drop sheets adorned at least half of the floor and furniture. She gave his punching bag a passing swack, then crossed to the kitchen and switched on the light.
It was bright white and more than adequate for her needs. Feeling decidedly disloyal, Devon balled her fists, pushed her recriminations aside and dug in.
She found nothing unusual on the coffee or end tables, nothing of significance in the stack of papers on the dining table. Only two empty soda cans, a candy-bar wrapper and photocopied reports on the Christmas Murders to date.
Pressing the heels of her hands to her gritty eyes, she rethought her motives. Love and underhanded searches did not mix for her.
She’d spent enough time in Riker’s bedroom to know that he kept little there of a personal nature. Socks, underwear and sweaters in the dresser. Jeans, shirts and jackets in the closet. And one black suit.
She smiled faintly, running her fingers over the fine wool-and-silk-blend fabric. He actually did own a tie, a narrow black affair with a subtle Celtic design woven through it in her favorite shade of blood-red. Irish-American, born to an addicted mother; adopted at age thirteen into a family of eleven other adopted children. Must have been a madhouse at Christmas time.
Her eyes swept across the closet floor. Boots, sneakers and a shoebox tied with white string.
Pictures of his late wife? Devon mused, aware of yet not quite ready to deal with the sharp tweak in her midsection.
Delia Brightman. She couldn’t forget the woman’s name. It had sounded familiar when Jimmy had mentioned it and did again now as it flashed through her head.
Kneeling, she drew the shoebox forward and untied the knot. If it was too personal she would stop. Invading privacy was one thing; shattering it was something else again.
Devon lifted the lid with tentative fingers. Nothing jumped out, so she peered inside—and released a huge breath when she spied a collection of old news clippings.
Setting the lid aside, she examined the top clipping.
Laura West, né Price, later confirmed as the Christmas Murderer’s first victim, had been a beautiful young woman at the time of her death, the great-niece of Ewen Mahoney-Price, a ruthless but shrewd racketeer from the twenties and thirties. Laura had been survived by her great aunt, Ida Price, her brother, Jacob Price, and her uncle, Rudy—
Devon broke off and snatched the paper around to better light. “‘—her uncle, Rudy Brown,”’ she read out loud, “‘a sergeant with the Philadelphia Police Force....’”
A strange sort of nausea settled in as she reread the words. Closing her eyes, she set the paper on the floor. When her knees threatened to shake, she collapsed beside the box and let her mind go.
Why hadn’t Riker told her? Why hadn’t Rudy? Why would they keep a secret like this?
She halted there, on the fringe of the most dreadful and frightening answer possible. A person might very well keep a secret like that if it meant hiding a much more horrible secret—the secret of a serial killer.
Chapter Seventeen
“Come on, Rudy,” Jacob said through chattering teet
h. “Open the door.”
He hit the bell again, used the icy brass knocker and finally resorted to his fist. Eight o’clock. The inside lights blazed, the shopping note was gone, but no one answered. Mandy must be in the bathtub.
Although he was tempted to pick the lock, Jacob’s conscience scotched the idea. Mandy’s car stood forlorn and snow-covered in the driveway. If he could pop the hood, he might get lucky and locate the spare house key she kept there for emergencies.
It took a full ten minutes to get the faulty hood latch to give. By comparison, ferreting out the key’s hiding place was a piece of cake. Only Mandy, Jacob reflected, sucking on a cut forefinger, would drive a piece of junk strictly because the cotton-candy seat covers matched her favorite lipstick.
Ernie Ford was singing Christmas gospel when Jacob finally wedged the back door open. “Anyone here?” he called into the murk of the kitchen. “Mandy? Rudy?”
No answer.
Tearing off his remaining glove with his teeth, he headed away from the rear stairwell. If Mandy was soaking in a hot tub, she wouldn’t appreciate him barging in on her.
Warmth and wood smoke wafted toward the back of the house. Jacob followed it to its source, which just happened to be Rudy’s den.
The lights burned brightest here. The computer screen blipped green where the cursor had stopped. There was a chair toppled backward, a poker lying on the hearth and what looked like spots of blood on the blue-gray carpet.
Jacob dropped to his right knee and tested one of the spots. Sticky, almost dry. Frowning, he brought his fingers away and sniffed. It was blood, a small puddle on the floor next to the computer desk and then several drops of it as the person bleeding apparently moved away.
Although there was not a sufficient amount to alarm him, he tracked it to the front door. Another small puddle, smeared, then the drips seemed to lead to the foot of the stairs. Which meant—what?
He eyed the front door, then the staircase. “Mandy?” he shouted.
No lights shone on the upper landing, but he checked it anyway. At the bedroom door, he knocked and called her name again.
