Aside from an automatic perusal that placed everyone’s position firmly in his brain, Tristan ignored the dancers milling around when he entered the apartment. His headache was back worse than before, but this time he had an aching, angry dick to match it. He couldn’t believe he’d let himself get so caught up in the taste and feel of her that he had actually lost sight of where he was. Angry with his unprecedented lapse, he snatched up the phone and growled, “MacLaughlin here.” His only consolation was the fact that she had looked just as stunned as he’d felt. Not as bloody frustrated, though. Tristan’s eyebrows gathered in a grim line above his nose. Nobody could feel as bloody frustrated.
“Lieutenant?” Joe Cash’s voice was tired and angry. He rattled off an address. “You’d better come right down. We’ve got us a new victim.”
Chapter
12
The address Joe Cash gave Tristan belonged to a small mom-and-pop-style grocery store downtown. The newest victim had been discovered in a Dumpster behind the store.
Tristan was grateful that the press had not yet been alerted, but judging by the activity in and around the store—the roped-off areas, the crackling radios and flashing lights—he thought it wouldn’t be long before they heard the news. His shoulders hunched. He would just have to deal with that particular problem when the time came. Right now he had other priorities.
The medical examiner was bent over a corpse with long blond hair. That’s all Tristan could see—the swath of pale hair and the dancer’s long legs, bruised and muddied. The rest was blocked from view by the wide backside of the examiner as he squatted alongside the body. Until he finished there was no use approaching, for in police procedure, the medical examiner’s job took precedence. Tristan walked around to the front of the store and went inside.
He was talking to a uniform when Joe stuck his head out a door at the back of the narrow store and hailed him. Edging his way past policemen and their paraphernalia, he had to turn sideways to navigate the narrow, can-laden aisles.
The room turned out to be a storeroom, piled high with empty boxes and several unopened cases of vodka. Joe was quietly talking to a shaken middle-aged woman when Tristan walked in. “Terrible business,” she was moaning, as she pulled a damp handkerchief between her fingers. “Terrible.”
“Lieutenant, this is Mrs. Schultz. She and her husband own the store, and she discovered the body.” Joe gently touched one of the woman’s hands to direct her attention. “Mrs. Schultz, this is Lieutenant MacLaughlin. He’ll be in charge of the investigation.”
“We don’t even use the Dumpster during the day—not very often,” she said in such a way that Tristan suspected it wasn’t the first time she had uttered those words today. She mumbled them like an incantation: said often enough, maybe the words could erase the horror of what she had discovered. “We just throw everything in the trash can behind the counter and take it out before we close up. But we got in a big shipment of vodka, and with all them boxes and stuff, I figured I’d better clear out some space. You kin see there’s not much room in here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tristan murmured.
“Harry’s been sick. That’s my husband—Harry.” Mrs. Schultz let go of her handkerchief with one hand and ran stubby, work-worn fingers through her salt-and-pepper hair. “His back’s been acting up somethin’ awful, so I tol’ him to stay home today. Then, when the vodka come in, I thought I’d surprise him by putting it all away myself. But it got so crowded back here, I had to clear out some space just to move around. So I took a pile of the empties out to the Dumpster. And…oh, jeez…that’s when I seen…” She turned away, as if embarrassed to let the two big detectives see her tears. The knuckles of one heavily veined hand pressed hard against her lips to stop them from trembling, and the handkerchief clenched in her fist vibrated visibly. “Where’s Harry?” she whispered. “I need Harry.”
“Your husband is on his way, Mrs. Schultz,” Joe assured her, reaching over to give her an awkward pat on her plump shoulder. “I called him myself, and he’s on his way.” Moments later a tall, thin, gray-haired man rushed in, making a beeline for the round little woman sitting on the vodka cases.
Tristan beckoned Joe to the far end of the storeroom. “What’s the story?”
“Doc’s not done out there yet, but even without the coroner’s report, there’s very little doubt it’s the same guy. Same exact MO: she was sexually molested and apparently beaten to death.”
“You doing my job for me now, Joey?” Tristan and Joe looked up as the medical examiner walked into the storeroom. He was just under average height, with a girth that made him appear nearly as wide as he was tall. His black hair was heavily streaked with gray, but he had a childlike, plump roundness of cheek and rosy coloring. He signaled them to step outside.
Out behind the store, the medical examiner pulled a cigar from the breast pocket of his sport shirt and struck a match, holding it to the tip and puffing until it glowed red. Shaking out the match, he turned to the two policemen. “Joe’s pretty much hit the nail on the head,” he said. “Superficial exam leads me to believe we’re dealing with the same perpetrator. There’s a pattern of tears and contusions that’s consistent with the previous victims. I’ll take samples of semen and the saliva where he bit her and run it through the lab, of course, but five’ll get you ten, if we’re dealing with the same man—and I’d put money on it—then he’s not a secretor, so we won’t make blood type that way. There appear to be minute skin particles under her nails, so it’s probable she scratched him. Maybe we’ll luck out there.” He puffed furiously on his cigar, wreathing his face in a cloud of blue smoke. “This is a fucking animal we’re dealing with, gentlemen.” Nodding to where two men were clumsily placing the body in a bag, he said, “She was probably a real looker. But he worked her over so systematically, you couldn’t tell it by me.”
“Aye,” Tristan agreed. “He’s getting bolder, then. I don’t like the sound of that. First the calls, and now this. If he’s gearing up for a rampage, there’s going to be hell to pay.” He caught a last glimpse of the victim’s hair as they closed the bag around her body, and the floor of his stomach rippled uneasily. It was almost the exact same shade as Amanda’s. “How long you estimate she’s been dead?”
“If you won’t hold me to it until I’ve had a chance to run ’er through the lab, I’d guess around ten to twelve hours. Call me about five this afternoon, and I’ll have a full report.”
“Thanks, Doc.” Tristan watched the man walk away, trailing a plume of pungent smoke behind him. He turned to Joe. “She have any ID on her?”
“Nothing that was readily visible,” Joe answered. He indicated two men sifting through the Dumpster. “They’re checking now to make sure nothing worked its way down to the bottom.” As they looked on, one of the men stiffened slightly and, using both hands, dug through the refuse. Still draped half in and half out of the Dumpster, he raised his upper torso and turned his head in their direction. “Lieutenant?”
Tristan walked over, reaching the Dumpster as the man slid off the container to his feet. “What have you got there?”
“Trouble, Lieutenant.” Holding it by means of a ballpoint pen thrust under the flap, he turned it so Tristan could see. It was a navy-blue leather clutch bag, and there was a small envelope paper-clipped to the flap. The man’s partner held open a plastic bag and he slipped the purse into it, then handed it to Tristan.
Tristan squinted to read the jagged line of letters. They had obviously been clipped from a magazine. And as he made sense of them, a chill slid down his spine.
It was addressed to him.
Long after she had heard the last of the dancers being ushered out by Rhonda, Amanda remained in the bathtub, trying to understand her encounter with MacLaughlin. Unconsciously, her hand kept rising up out of the water to touch her tender mouth. She had never felt like this before.
Never.
One simple kiss shouldn’t drive a woman to such unaccustomed lengths, s
hould it? Somehow, though, simple didn’t seem to adequately describe it—he’d involved so much more of himself than merely his mouth.
Oh, God, she couldn’t understand this. She didn’t even like MacLaughlin—well, except for his smile, but that was seen about as frequently as an entertaining commercial.
How could you like someone whose expression hardly ever changed? He was aloof, cool-eyed, and distant, and as far as she could tell, he totally lacked the primary asset that always before had attracted her to a man—a sense of humor.
He wasn’t so cool-eyed and distant twenty minutes ago, Amanda Rose.
Hysteria tinged her sudden laughter in the empty bathroom. She didn’t even know his first name. That Bunny woman had said it when she’d called to him out in the yard that night, but Amanda had been too wrapped up in her anger and fear at the time to pay attention. How could she harbor an attraction for a man whose first name she didn’t even know?
Yeah, you’re a regular Miss Manners. Notice it didn’t seem to slow you down any out there in the alcove.
Where had all that emotion come from, and where had all his icy self-control gone? What else was under that disciplined exterior? She would have sworn he was colder than an arctic wind, but it was going to be difficult to maintain that theory now. God, she’d never felt so much heat enveloping her, and it had all originated from MacLaughlin’s mouth, from his hands and his body. Did he always kiss like that? Had MacLaughlin gone back to his apartment that night and kissed Bunny with the same single-minded concentration? With the same intensity? Had he pressed her up against a wall and—
Not that she’d care, of course. She wouldn’t…she didn’t. She was merely curious to know if the expertise he’d displayed this morning was the result of years of practice. She’d assumed she had been kissed by experts before, but no one else had ever kissed her quite like that. No one else had ever made her feel as if every atom of his awareness was focused exclusively on her.
She rolled her shoulders uneasily, not liking the manner in which her body responded to the mere memory. So, MacLaughlin had somehow unearthed her hot button—so what? It was blind luck.
She sat up abruptly, causing her bath water to slosh from one end of the tub to the other in a gathering wave. Is there someone else in this room I don’t know about, Mandy? Just who do you think you’re kidding?
No one else had ever elicited that response from her before—no one. When it came to the passion department, she’d always assumed she was—well, not deficient, exactly—just sort of inured. She had always secretly believed she was more like Mother and Father than she cared to admit. Sexual urges usually seemed so…extraneous. Now, thanks to that assumption, she was left nakedly unprepared for the barrage of sensations that remained with her long after MacLaughlin had jerked himself away and stomped off—sensations that made her feel raw and exposed. Yesterday, she would have scoffed if someone had told her it was possible to feel this aching, greedy need.
Yesterday, she hadn’t stood on tiptoe and wrapped her leg around some guy’s rear end to yank him into her waiting heat.
With uncharacteristically awkward movements, Amanda climbed out of the bath and toweled herself dry. Crossing to the mirror, she untucked a corner of the towel from between her breasts and used it to clear a circle in the middle of the steamed-over glass. Curiously, she leaned forward and peered at her image.
She looked the same as always. Her fingers touched her lips again. Her mouth was a tiny bit swollen, and there were one or two red patches from the scratchy abrasion of his beard, but other than that, it was doubtful anyone would guess that just a short while ago they’d been all over each other like—
She jerked back, defenses slamming into place. Not that there was any real reason to look different. It was a kiss, dammit. Just a kiss.
Yeah, sure.
So, what was she supposed to do the next time she saw him? Pretend it never happened? Was that what he would do? She knew he’d been as affected by their encounter as she had been; she’d practically been glued to the rigid length of his penis, so it was pretty darn difficult to miss. But he hadn’t looked too happy about it.
Don’t call me robot, ever again. She could hear his voice, saying that; see the look in his eyes. Oh, MacLaughlin, robot is no longer the word that comes to mind when I think of you.
She didn’t think she was capable of pretending it hadn’t happened. At the very least, she wasn’t going to be able to view him as she had before. God help her, she hadn’t chosen to be attracted to him. But it was her first genuine encounter with passion, and she knew she was going to remember his hands and mouth and the heat he had generated every time she looked at him. Things had been a lot simpler when she’d been half convinced he was an android.
She suddenly shivered in the warm room. What if he expected to take up where they’d left off? Would she be allowed to say yes or no? She had left him in very little doubt as to her willingness, but that was then. As for now…She didn’t know what she wanted.
She really, really wished she did.
For once in her life, Amanda didn’t look forward to rehearsal. And, as luck would have it, the first person she saw when she and Rhonda walked onto the stage was Randy, the next-to-last person she wanted to see. He was examining a welt on his right wrist that looked wickedly painful, and didn’t notice them immediately. He hastily dropped his sleeve over the injury as soon as he spotted them, obviously in no mood to welcome questions, but it was too late. Rhonda’s curiosity was aroused.
“What happened to you?” she demanded, crossing to where he stood. Despite his attempt to stop her, she pushed up his sleeve and peered at the red, raw-looking welts that criss-crossed his arm nearly to his elbow. “God, Randy, that’s ugly.”
“Tell me about it.” He snatched his arm away and pulled down the sleeve, glaring at Rhonda and altogether avoiding eye contact with Amanda. “All I tried to do was pet a damn cat. You woulda thought I was frigging made out of catnip, the way it attached itself to my arm.”
“Whose cat was it?”
“How the hell do I know whose cat? One outside my apartment, is all. It was black and pretty and I just wanted to pet it.”
One of Rhonda’s eyebrows rose. “Maybe this is just God’s way of telling you not to go around snatching yourself an uninvited handful of pussy whenever you feel the urge.” She stared at him with large, guileless eyes. “You suppose?”
An unexpected snort of pure, undiluted laughter caught sideways in Amanda’s throat and threatened to blow it apart. She attempted to quell it, which hurt, and wondered why she was bothering to try to spare Randy’s feelings. He had never stopped to consider hers in his attempts to grab a handful of whatever portion of her anatomy caught his fancy. Giving up the effort, she threw back her head and laughed uninhibitedly.
Randy pinned them both with a killing glare, then stomped off toward the dressing rooms. He brushed roughly past David and Dean when they crossed paths in the wings, and they were still darting puzzled glances at him over their shoulders as they approached the two women.
“What’s with him?” David jerked a thumb at the now-empty wings.
“I dunno, Davey,” Rhonda said innocently. “We were just discussing lessons to be learned from the animal kingdom and he turned sulky.” She met Amanda’s eye and they both grinned.
It flashed through Amanda’s mind that Rhonda’s remark wasn’t all that far off the mark. Randy’s cat had displayed more intelligence than Amanda had when it came to dealing with unwanted attention. It had registered a protest by tearing some strips off its antagonist’s hide. Unlike Amanda, it obviously hadn’t seen any reason to wait to take a stand.
She looked up and caught Dean regarding her closely. By the speculative gleam in his eye, she deduced David had been discussing her. Undoubtedly, her confrontation with Randy earlier had dredged up stories of her lack of male/female relationships in general. More to divert his attention than from a real desire to know, she asked, “Aren�
��t you going to be warm in that get-up?”
Ask ten different dancers what they considered appropriate to wear to rehearsal and you’d get ten different answers. The only reason she had mentioned Dean’s apparel—aside from diverting his attention—was that in some subliminal corner of her mind, she had thought he was one of those who preferred to dance stripped down. Come to think of it, however, these were the same clothes he’d had on this morning. Hell, maybe it was a new fashion trend she hadn’t yet tumbled to. Randy had also been wearing cover-up togs today, and he usually practiced in the bare minimum, too.
Dean glanced down at his long-sleeved T-shirt and gray sweats. “I’m keeping my muscles warm.” He flashed her a charming smile. “I’ll probably pull off a few layers once we get going.”
Whether he did or not, Amanda never noticed. The morning’s events kept distracting her. It was all she could do to focus her wandering concentration on each separate movement of the dance and thus avoid calling Charlie’s wrath down on her head.
The phone was ringing in her apartment when she dashed in between rehearsal and show, but she ignored it. MacLaughlin wasn’t home. She told herself it didn’t matter to her one way or the other, yet almost involuntarily she had felt compelled to check. His blinds were pulled, however, and Ace was in the yard, disconsolately nosing a small red ball between his fat paws. Seeing Amanda, he snatched it up in his jaws and followed her up the stairs and into her apartment. He trotted after her into her bedroom, dropping the ball between her feet and darn near tripping her in the process.
“Not now, Ace,” she muttered, dropping her purchases on the bed. When she glanced down at him, though, he managed to look so crestfallen that she relented slightly. She scooped him up and sat on the edge of the bed, plunking the pup in her lap. “Want to see what I bought?”
She still wasn’t sure what had gotten into her. After rehearsal, she had followed an irresistible urge to go shopping, and the frothy, colorful bits of satin, silk, and lace that she poured out of the bags onto the bed were the result of her spree.
Shadow Dance Page 20
