Charade

by Sandra Brown

  It was early. The corridors were deserted. He was alone in the elevator. As he made his way across the lobby, he noticed only one sleepy clerk at the reception desk. The clerk didn’t see him.

  He’d arrived in San Antonio just after midnight on a flight from LAX that had stopped for an hour layover in Dallas. He had tried to call Cat from D-FW Airport, then again upon his arrival in San Antonio. She hadn’t answered either time.

  He had considered leaving messages on her answering machine, but decided against it. On the chance that Pierce was there with her, he didn’t want to appear a fool and have his voice broadcast into the bedroom where they were making love.

  Besides, he was uncertain of the welcome he’d receive from her. The last time they spoke, she’d hung up on him. He’d told her about the fatal shooting of a Houston undercover police officer that was attributed to Pierce. Where Pierce was concerned, she was thinking with her heart rather than her head.

  But what woman didn’t?

  Upon reflection, maybe it was better that he hadn’t reached her by telephone. His visit would come as a complete surprise. Although it shouldn’t. Today was the anniversary of her transplant.

  The street was dark and quiet.

  Cyc parked his bike in the deep shadows of a live oak tree at the opposite end of the block and squinted his good eye into focus on Cat Delaney’s house.

  He recognized the car in the driveway—it belonged to Pierce. There was another car parked at the curb. The lights were on in the front rooms.

  “Shit.”

  Things just weren’t working out for him these days. Obviously it would be stupid to barge in while her cop friend was with her.

  He was considering his next move, when a man he’d never seen before opened her front door. He said something over his shoulder, then came out onto the porch, closing the door behind him.

  He glanced around furtively. Cyclops held his breath, but he went unnoticed in his shadowy hiding place. The man walked quickly to Pierce’s car and drove it into the garage. He came out moments later and manually lowered the heavy door. He then hurried to the car at the curb, and, after juggling a set of keys, got in and drove away in the opposite direction from where Cyclops was hiding.

  He ruminated on the peculiar activity. He didn’t know for certain that the car in the driveway belonged to Pierce, did he? He’d only seen Pierce driving it. It might, in fact, belong to her.

  And maybe she had something going with someone besides Pierce. Why else would the dude be leaving her house at this time of morning, real sneaky-like? Now that he’d left, was she alone?

  Cyc left his bike beneath the live oak and started up the street on foot.

  Cat felt the need to cleanse herself of Alex’s touch, his smell, all essence of him. She could spare a few minutes in the tub before Hunsaker arrived. What would happen after that was anybody’s guess.

  With a heavy sigh, she sank into the hot bubble bath and laid her head against the rim of the tub. She longed to immerse herself just as completely in her despair, to cry until she was hollow. But she couldn’t allow her emotions to surface now. She had to be pragmatic, cold, hard, as ruthless as he had been.

  Heartless, she thought cynically.

  She closed her eyes in an effort to blot out images of Alex, but still she envisioned his face in all its various modes—while making love, while talking intently about his work, while speaking of his devotion to Amanda.

  Rising emotion caused a catch in her throat. She cleared it away, impatiently, aggressively. That’s probably why she didn’t hear the bathroom door open. In fact, if it hadn’t been for a faint draft, she probably wouldn’t have opened her eyes.

  When she did, she jerked erect, sloshing water over the rim of the tub. “What are you doing?”

  “Surprised?”

  She was stunned. Too stunned even to scream. Bewildered, she watched as her hair dryer was plugged into the wall socket above her dressing table. When the switch was flicked, it began to whir softly.

  “I’m sorry, Cat.” The sad-sweet smile caused her blood to turn cold. “You’re about to become the victim of a tragic accident.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  “Shit!”

  Alex banged his fist against the BMW’s steering wheel. These sons of bitches weren’t supposed to run out of gas! Of all the damn luck—to steal a car with an empty gas tank.

  He twisted the wheel hard enough to get the car onto the shoulder of the freeway, flung the door open, and took off at a full run. It would serve his yuppie neighbor right if the goddamn thing got stolen and stripped. Out of gas, for crissake!

  There was little traffic. He raised his thumb to several passing vehicles, but he doubted that anyone would stop for him. He didn’t look very trustworthy—hair uncombed, unshaven, shirttail flapping.

  He took the exit ramp, his feet pounding the pavement while he mentally counted the number of blocks he had to cover before reaching Cat’s street.

  He was afraid to think about what he might find when he got there.

  He’d awakened that morning with the solution to the mystery. While he was asleep, his subconscious had worked it out. A key piece to this complicated chessboard had been missing all along. That empty space seemed so glaring to him now. Why hadn’t he noticed it before three innocent people were killed? He cursed his stupidity. Everyone in this tangle of intertwined lives was present and accounted for except one.

  Unfortunately, it was the lethal one.

  Legs pumping, arms churning, he turned a corner and would have maimed himself on a fireplug if he hadn’t seen it in the nick of time. He hurdled it, barely breaking stride.

  “Live, Cat. Don’t die on me. Not you, too.”

  Cat’s teeth were chattering. “Why are you doing this? I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you do. Your death by electrocution will be just like the others. A lamentable accident.”

  “Well, you couldn’t make your intention any plainer than that, could you?”

  “Cat Delaney. Ever the joker.”

  “You won’t get away with it this time. Lieutenant Hunsaker is on his way here.”

  Jeff Doyle merely smiled. “I called time and temperature, not the police.”

  “Bill—”

  “I sent him out on an errand. His unexpected arrival was a glitch, but I devised a way to get rid of him. I suggested that he move his car away from the house, so that when Pierce shows up to do you in, he won’t be warned off.”

  “Very clever.”

  “Oh yes. I’ve learned to cover my tracks well. When Bill gets back, he’ll find me on the phone demanding to know why Hunsaker isn’t here yet. We’ll eventually get worried about you and come looking. We’ll discover your body.

  “I’ll get hysterical, as gay men are wont to do in times of stress,” he said with a short laugh. “I’ll berate myself for not urging you to update the wiring in this old house. You should have had a ground fault interrupter installed to prevent this kind of catastrophe.

  “I’ll theorize that you were so upset over Pierce’s treachery, you weren’t thinking straight and reached for your hair dryer. Webster will back my story. He saw how shaken you were to discover that your lover was planning to kill you.”

  “Which Alex will deny.”

  “No doubt. But he’ll also be implicated in the other deaths when the authorities see that incriminating evidence in his apartment. Thank you for telling me about his secret room, Cat. Apparently he kept extensive files of those interviews.”

  “Interviews?”

  “His interviews with the heart transplantees. He makes quite an impression on people, you know. Each of them mentioned him to me. All were flattered that he’d interviewed them for his book. Mr. Pierce is very clever and extremely charming. None realized that he was actually searching for Amanda’s heart.

  “Even I fell for his ruse and believed he was researching a book. That is, until I began doing research for you and discovered that his la
dy love had been a heart donor.

  “Once the police find those files, he’ll have some fancy explaining to do, won’t he?” He gave a high-pitched giggle. “I must admit I was quite taken aback when he suddenly appeared on the scene. I was afraid he’d ruin everything by catching on to me. He obviously began to smell a rat when the heart transplantees he’d interviewed began turning up dead. Granted, a year apart. But to a former crime-solver the pattern would be too curious to ignore.

  “Besides wanting to find his Amanda in you, the dear man probably wanted to save you from the same fate as the others. His desire to protect you was really quite noble.

  “I even suspected that he was the one who sent you those articles. They threw me for a loop. It made me nervous to learn that someone had figured out my plan. Not that that would have stopped me.

  “Pierce did, however, add some excitement. He made the situation more complex and therefore more interesting. The other disposals were almost too easily accomplished. I came to regard him as a challenge. And now he’ll make an excellent scapegoat that I hadn’t planned on.”

  He shook his head and smacked his lips with regret. “It doesn’t bode well for our bestselling author, does it? Especially considering all those files that he keeps under lock and key. It sounds as though the man is positively obsessed, doesn’t it?”

  Striking a pensive posture, he added, “Actually, Pierce and I are similarly motivated.”

  “You mean to find Amanda’s heart? You knew her, too?”

  “Cat,” he said in a chastising tone. “Where’s your imagination? Haven’t you figured it out yet? Shame on you.”

  His calm articulation terrified her. If he’d been ranting and raving and frothing at the mouth, she would have feared him less. Instead, his cool logic and soft voice clearly indicated to her his level of madness. He was totally detached from reality.

  “As usual, no one will suspect me of wrongdoing,” he said. “You blamed Melia for everything that went wrong, never suspecting me. I leaked the O’Connor story to Ron Truitt. I also called him, identified myself as Cyclops, and fed him that malarkey about child molestation. I was afraid he’d recognize my voice during that meeting in Webster’s office. But he was too intent on attacking you to pay any attention to me.

  “It was tricky to rig the light, but I did that, too. The damned thing nearly killed you ahead of schedule. It was only supposed to scare you.”

  His lips formed a moue of remorse. “After suffering so many setbacks, both personal and professional, it will be understandable that you became overwrought, even suicidal, on the anniversary of your transplant.

  “I’ll move to another part of the country, get a job, and blend into the woodwork again. I can play almost any role, pass myself off as anything. I’m very adaptable. Very average. Very forgettable. People rarely notice me.” His eyes turned wistful. “Only Judy thought I was special.”

  “Judy? Judy Reyes? You’re her lover!”

  “Ah! You finally figured it out. That’s me, the nameless man who escaped that cretin.”

  In a dramatic mood shift, his eyes suddenly filled with tears. “He brained her with a baseball bat.”

  “How’d you manage to get away?”

  “He stood over her, looking down at what he’d done. He seemed to be fascinated by the amount of blood that pooled beneath her head. He was sort of in a trance and paid no attention to me. I grabbed my clothes and ran. I knew I couldn’t do Judy any good. I knew she was dead. I felt her death as keenly as if I’d died myself.”

  His chest rose and fell with pent-up rage as he recalled that sultry afternoon in Fort Worth. “Judy was very religious, and steeped in the Hispanic culture. Her husband knew how she would feel about her body being butchered.”

  “She wouldn’t have approved of organ donation,” Cat said.

  She had to keep him talking, in order to give Bill time to return. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for a means of escape or a weapon with which to defend herself. But as long as he held the humming hair dryer over the tub just beyond her grasp, she was afraid even to move. The second she did, he’d drop the dryer and she would be history.

  “She would have been mortified by the mere suggestion of it,” he was saying. “She would have wanted her body to be buried intact. Reyes knew that. Donating her organs was his way of punishing us for loving each other. He had her dismembered to torture us throughout eternity. The only way I can release us from this curse is to stop her heart.”

  “By killing the recipient.”

  “Yes,” he said flatly. “As long as her heart goes on beating, her soul will be in torment. I vowed over her grave that I would give her the rest and peace she deserves. So I had to kill that boy.”

  “The young man in Memphis. How’d you locate him?”

  He shrugged as though that had been the easiest part. “I got a job with an organ procurement agency. Soon, I had the ONUS number assigned to Judy’s heart and tracked it to him.”

  “Then, if you’d done what you promised Judy, why the others? Why were they killed? Why kill me?”

  “Computers are fallible because people operate them. What if the numbers had been accidentally scrambled?” He shook his head as though that were unthinkable. “I couldn’t take a chance on there being a mistake.”

  “So you decided to eliminate any patient who received a heart that day.”

  “That’s the only way I could guarantee the completion of my mission.”

  Cat shivered, but tried not to show her mounting terror. “Why’d you wait until the anniversary each year?”

  “Otherwise, it would have been an ordinary killing spree. I’m not psychotic. Keeping to the anniversary lends the killings a ceremonious aspect that Judy would’ve liked. She attended only formal masses. She liked ritual, order, traditional rites. This is the way she would want it.”

  “You actually believe that she’d be proud of you for murdering three people?”

  “She would want me to reunite her with her heart. That’s what I’m going to do. Then her soul can cease its search.” He wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “I love her too much to let her spirit remain in torment. I’m sorry that you have to die, Cat. I like you very much. But there’s simply no other way.”

  He kissed his fingertips, then pressed them against Cat’s chest. “Rest well, Judy, my love. I’ll love you forever.”

  Cat grabbed his hand just as the other one released the hair dryer. She screamed.

  The lights went out.

  The hair dryer fell into the water but did no more damage than cause a splash.

  Jeff cried out in dismay and frustration.

  Cat surged up out of the water, but he knocked her back down. She heard his kneecaps crack against the tile floor as he dropped beside the tub. His hands landed hard on the top of her head and pushed it beneath the surface of the water.

  He held her down. She struggled, flailing her arms and legs, twisting her head from side to side, clawing his arms. But he didn’t let go. Reflexively, she opened her mouth to scream. It filled with bath water.

  As if from a distance, she heard footsteps pounding down the hall. The bathroom door crashed open, and suddenly she was free. She raised her head out of the water and gasped for air, choking on the water in her throat and nasal passages. Her hair clung to her face, obscuring her vision, although it was so dark in the bathroom that she couldn’t have seen much anyway.

  “Cat?” It was Alex.

  “I’m here.”

  “Stay out of the way,” he shouted.

  He had wrestled Jeff to the floor. It would be no contest. Alex was by far the stronger. “You son of a bitch, if you’ve hurt her—” His threat ended in a grunt of surprise and pain.

  “Is she all right?” It was Bill, standing in the open door.

  A tongue of flame shot from the barrel of Alex’s pistol. The roar ricocheted off the bathroom walls.

  Bill went down without a so
und.

  Alex bellowed in fury.

  By now Cat’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness. She was able to see that Jeff had somehow managed to get his hands around Alex’s pistol. They were struggling for possession.

  The side of the porcelain tub was slippery and wet, but Cat scrambled over it. She attacked Jeff’s face with her bare hands, pummeling it with her fists, scratching it with her nails, pulling his hair.

  He screamed in pain and let go of the pistol, which Alex shoved against the back of his ear as he flipped him over and straddled the small of his back.

  “Move,” he said, heaving to regain his breath. “Please. I’d enjoy nothing better than to blow your fucking head off.”

  “Go ahead and shoot me,” Jeff sobbed. “I’ve failed Judy. I want to die.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  Cat picked her way around them, stumbled through the doorway, and tripped over Webster’s feet. “Bill?” In the meager light, she saw him sprawled on his back. The stain spreading across the front of his shirt looked as black as ink. “Oh, God, no. No,” she whimpered.

  Too weak to stand, she crawled to the nightstand and dragged the phone to the floor. She punched out 911.

  Then she crawled back to Bill, grasped his hand tightly, and whispered for him to hold on. “Help’s on the way,” she called to Alex, and was startled by the faintness of her voice.

  “How’s Webster?” he asked.

  “He hasn’t moved.”

  “Christ,” she heard him say. “You might have another murder chalked up to you, Mr. Doyle.”

  Jeff was babbling incoherently.

  Cat’s teeth were chattering. She grabbed a corner of the bedspread and pulled it toward her. But instead of wrapping herself in it, she spread it over Bill, tucking it around him.

  The wail of approaching sirens was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard. She bent over Bill and said urgently, “Hang on, Bill. Help’s here. Can you hear me? You’ll be all right. You will!” He didn’t respond, but she hoped he sensed her presence.

  Lieutenant Hunsaker was the first one into the house. “What’s wrong with the lights?”