The Stroke of Midnight Page 13

  Momentarily distracted by the texture of her hair and skin and the lovely, soft curve of her cheek beneath the bright office lights, Jacob let his fingers linger unmoving. Exquisite, he thought, then snapped out of it and tilted a surprised brow as Roscoe Beale was escorted in.

  “Knock it off, will you?” Roscoe snatched his arm free and scowled at the trio before him. “What’s going on, Devon? I pitch a McDonald’s wrapper, and suddenly I’m a criminal?”

  “There were a dozen McDonald’s cups and wrappers in the dumpster,” Colby confirmed. “One of them could have been his.”

  “Was his,” Roscoe stated sullenly.

  Jacob caught his attention with a faint movement of his head. “What are you doing here so late, Beale?”

  “Working. Is that a problem?”

  “Where are your shoes and tie?” Dugan inquired, making notes.

  “I—”

  Jacob ran a considering finger under his bottom lip. “Your hair’s out of place. It’s not your usual style.”

  “Look, I don’t—”

  “How tall are you?”

  “Six feet. Does it matter?”

  “The height’s right,” Jacob said to Dugan. “But I don’t think he’d be stupid enough to ditch his paraphernalia in a garbage chute in plain sight of a uniformed cop.” At Dugan’s thinned lips, he shrugged. “Just an opinion. Why is your hair messed up, Roscoe?”

  The man’s shoulders slumped. “I was——exercising.”

  “While chowing down on a Big Mac?” Dugan sounded skeptical, but he let the question ride as he jotted another quick note in his book.

  Twenty tedious minutes later, he wrapped up with a slap of the leather cover. “That’ll do for now, folks. We’ll leave a few men here tonight to finish checking things out. You can go, Mr. Beale, just not too far at present, hmm?” His voice gruffed up. “You taking Ms. Tremayne home... Riker?”

  Jacob matched his level stare. “Unless you need her at the station.”

  “No, but you and I need to have a nice long chat.” Dugan’s smile had all the earmarks of a shark preparing to chow down. “Say, first thing tomorrow morning?”

  “Your office.” Jacob climbed to his feet. He was so knotted up at this point that even the smallest movement hurt. Taking Devon by the hand, he drew her off the sofa. “Come on. You look all in.”

  Dugan made an unintelligible sound in his throat and strode over to where Rudy had been standing silently the entire time. “Tomorrow—Riker,” he barked over his shoulder.

  Devon offered Jacob a tired smile. “If we’re lucky, the sun’ll come out.”

  He removed her coat from its peg and helped her into it. “Did I miss something?”

  “It’s a song concept from Annie.” A shiver enveloped her. She glanced at the muddied blackness beyond the window. “Something tells me it’s more likely to snow tomorrow.”

  It would for him, Jacob thought, recalling the knife that had been found downstairs. But not for Devon, not if he could help it.

  A bleak sense of doom slithered into his mind. It had bony fingers and a jackal’s bitter smile. It wore black and wielded a weapon it had no business possessing. No business and with only one possible purpose. Whoever the hell he was, the Christmas Murderer wanted him to take the fall for Devon’s death.

  Chapter Ten

  Devon dreamed that Riker not only put her to bed, but actually slid between the rose-colored sheets with her. Then, by red-and-white candlelight, he made slow, erotic love to her until the first shadowy threads of dawn crept over the windowsill.

  He drove her home, that was no dream. He reassured Hannah, brewed a perfect pot of chamomile tea and only looked dangerous when she emerged from the bathroom clad in a voluminous white flannel nightgown. It should have been virginal and utterly unprovocative. She’d chosen it strictly for comfort. But from the glint that appeared in his dark eyes, she might have been clad in a black lace bra with sheer stockings and her skimpiest pair of bikini briefs.

  Instead, folds of flannel enshrouded her in a cocoon which did little to combat the dreadful flashes of memory pummeling her. However, while the gleam in Jacob’s eyes didn’t steady her nerves, better a gleam of desire than one of torment and madness.

  She shuddered free of the macabre recollections, sipped her tea under Riker’s watchful gaze, and in the end didn’t possess sufficient energy to offer even a token resistance when he ordered her to snuggle into the overstuffed feather pillows.

  She wanted to stay awake. She felt Riker brush the hair from her forehead, thought—hoped—that he really did feather a light kiss across her brow. But that could have been her imagination....

  She tumbled like a child exhausted from a day of hard play, into a fluffy cloud of dreams. Soothing at first, the fall took a last-second detour into a nightmare. Luckily, she wrenched free of those sleeping images. Awake and perspiring, she spotted Riker sprawled in an armchair, looking rumpled and sexy in a fitful drowse. Pleased and strangely comforted, she took a second tumble into a much more intriguing dreamscape....

  Riker’s body was slick in her night fantasy. Lithely muscled in the manner of a jungle cat. Predator as opposed to prey. He closed the door on Detective Dugan’s scowl of displeasure, took her by the hands and led her away from the obvious horror.

  “Ave Maria” played harp-sweet and poignant in the wood-smoked air. He hadn’t shaved, but his hair felt damp. The ends of it skimmed over the heated flesh of her shoulders as he lowered his mouth to hers.

  He tasted of sex and sin and risk. Blood throbbed in her veins. The vibrations that started deep in her stomach spread slowly to the rest of her body. Desire brought a shiver of anticipation to her skin. And yet...

  Devon sensed a stone wall between them. Invisible, perhaps beginning to crumble, but tangible enough to her mind that she was reluctant to stray too close.

  Questions lurked as they always did, below the level of consciousness for the most part, but every once in a while they bobbed to the surface.

  Where had Riker come from tonight? Where had her attacker gone? What about those two earlier occasions, in her office and at the Holly Tree. Where had he been then?

  Ah, but where had anybody been?

  She soothed her rising fear with that question. She avoided the unpleasant possibilities of the others—or tried to.

  The dream resumed its assault on her battered senses.

  Devon’s heart swelled as she absorbed Riker’s hungry kisses. Could she be in love with him? No. Almost, but love couldn’t happen until the wall broke down and she caught at least a glimpse of his other side.

  Was that asking too much? Was it a cop thing to erect walls? A survival technique? If so, was it fair for her to tear it down? Did love require learning every secret?

  The dream began to dissolve. Nothing to do but let it go. Clouds seeped in, black and threatening. Edged with purple, as if by a winter storm.

  Something flashed gold in her mind. The angel pendant. Except the angel held a knife aimed directly at her heart.

  Blood spilled onto her white gown. “So ends your ninth life, cat,” a man’s horribly familiar voice rasped. But he didn’t say “cat,” he said, “Devon”. Then he held the knife up and called her Angela, shouted the name Angela at her as he gave chase.

  One scene bled into another, primary colors melting in the rain.

  Detective Dugan strode in, a brawny Irishman with frizzy red hair and broad features. She thought he liked Riker deep down, but he’d sniped at him in the aftermath of the attack. Riker had reacted with smoldering silence. He was good at that, Devon decided. Rudy had simply stared at the floor. Very peculiar all around.

  Dream voices droned in her head, but always it was Riker’s face she saw, troubled and brooding, staring at her, through her, resolved, he swore, to stop a madman. Oh, yes, she did almost love him.

  So why, she wondered, as black storm clouds bubbled and boiled on the fringes of her sleeping thoughts, did his face continue to super
impose itself over a wall of fractured stone...?

  RUDY STRODE into his old precinct the same way he had in the past, eyes down, ears alert, twitchy fingers jingling the loose change in his pants’ pockets. The usual babble surrounded him, talk of boozers and junkies, pimps and porno kings. Three people murdered on a South Side street corner. Big robbery in Germantown. None of their concern here, but nice to know the snobs had problems, too. Internal affairs had been nosing around lately. Two guns had gone missing, along with a mink coat, a box of Cuban cigars and a quantity of designer drug.

  Rudy snorted to himself. Designer drug be damned. Call it heroin and be done with it. As for the Cuban cigars, empty a few pockets and sock tops on the way out, boys. Cuban puffs were hard to come by and the best money could buy, law permitting.

  “Right turn, Rude.”

  Dugan stood like General Patton at the top of a dingy corridor, feet straddled, beefy fists planted on his hips. His suit was shiny in spots, a dreary dark gray with two cigarshaped bulges in the jacket pockets. Rudy smothered a snicker and turned.

  “No excuses,” Dugan warned. “Interrogation room one. No interruptions,” he added to the desk sergeant.

  The door had barely clicked shut before Dugan blasted forward to slap his palms on the tabletop. “Is he crazy, impersonating one of mine?”

  “Ours.”

  “Don’t get smart—or technical. You’re not part of us, anymore, and Jacob never was.”

  “He made a few rounds with Riker.”

  “Years ago; limited rounds, and only because the old captain admired his grit. I hate grit, and I hate reporters even more.”

  “Jacob’s more than a reporter.”

  “Yeah, right. He bought the Beat. But deep down he’s still a reporter on the scent of a hot story.” He straightened, fingers splayed. “Okay, I don’t have a problem with that. But steal Riker’s name, rank and badge number? Damned straight there’s a problem. Bottom line, Rudy: he backs off now, or I bust him for fraud.”

  “He’s doing it for Laura, Dugan.”

  “Like hell.” He stalked to the far wall, pivoted. “Maybe that’s how it started, but Laura’s long gone. He’s doing it for Devon Tremayne, whether he—or you—realize that.”

  Rudy’s mouth opened, then slowly closed. How could a man argue what was so obviously true. “I’ll pass the message on,” he promised. “But tell me the scuttlebutt. Is anyone talking Christmas Murderer, yet?”

  Dugan’s lips clamped.

  “Figured as much. Coombes is still the man.”

  “We’ll investigate, Rudy. Devon Tremayne was attacked, no one doubts that. But I’ve got a question for you.” His stare burned into Rudy’s. “Why did you agree to help Jacob with this idiotic scheme? You weren’t so fond of Laura that you’d be hellbent on turning over every clue searching for flaws.”

  Rudy looked away. “I’m fond of Jacob, Dugan.”

  “Fond of, or worried about?” Sensing he’d struck a nerve, Dugan prodded further. “Maybe you think he’s a little too obsessed about this guy, huh? Maybe you wonder why he’s so insistent that we’re wrong and he’s right. Say Coombes didn’t do it. Maybe Jacob knows something the rest of us don’t.” Insinuating red brows lanced upward. “Like who the Christmas Murderer really is.”

  “I DON’T LOVE HER,” Jacob muttered as he tore into yet another cardboard box. “This is for Laura. It has to be.”

  But it wasn’t, and both his heart and his intellect knew it.

  He swore volubly as he yanked the last item from the box. No knife. No surprise either, and no damned way he could do a thing about it.

  “What’s all this?” A world-weary Rudy stepped over several lids and a wad of packing material. “You said you needed to go through the stuff in storage; you didn’t tell me you were going to use a vandal’s tactics. Why the mess?”

  Jacob blew out an exasperated breath and, from his knees, shook the long hair from his eyes. “The knife’s gone, Rudy.”

  “Which knife?” Rudy’s hand froze halfway to his face as comprehension dawned. “Ewen’s? Jesus, Jacob.”

  Feeling surly, Jacob climbed to his feet and tossed down a burlap wrapper. “It was here when Laura died. I packed everything Ida’d already given her. He stole the knife deliberately, Rudy. Whoever he is, he’s done his homework on me; which is to say, he knows I’m not Riker.”

  “Dugan warned you, Jacob. So did I. You’re in a fine mess now, kid. Dugan’s hopping. He’ll keep mum, but only if you back off. Now, today, this minute.”

  Jacob slid his uncle a lethal stare, “Back off and let Devon die? Wind up in prison on a frame?”

  “You don’t know...”

  “Dammit, Rudy, he wants her dead. The knife’s gone. I admit, it probably can’t be linked to me since it was stolen to begin with—unless my prints happen to be on it—but that doesn’t alter the attempted frame. I can’t back off. I won’t.”

  “I figured as much.” Rudy kicked at a patch of straw on the plank floor. “So, how’s Devon?”

  “She’s fine. She’s strong. A team of mules couldn’t have kept her from working today.”

  “You being that team, I suppose.”

  Jacob cursed and picked up a slatted lid. “He’d have killed her, Rudy. Stabbed her through the heart with my knife.” He paused, sidetracked. “That’s out of character.”

  “She’s lucky. A cat with nine lives,” Rudy remarked sagely. “Isn’t that what he called her?”

  “Something like that. Cats have nine lives. Seven women are dead. And—” he frowned. What had Devon told him? Someone called Angela. “Do you remember an Angela, Rudy?”

  His uncle patted his plaid shirt in search of a cigarette. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Could bear out Dugan’s copycat theory, though.”

  Jacob’s lashes lowered in thought. “It could also mean that he murdered someone before Laura.”

  “Not as part of the Christmas Murders. That angle was pushed, poked and prodded until dead.”

  Jacob sighed. “Four of them killed at midnight. You made reference to that last week.”

  “Did I?” No particular emotion registered on Rudy’s face. “Don’t remember it.”

  “You said we should pray for a midnight clear. When Devon was attacked at the Holly Tree, the murderer used the tune ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”’

  “Yeah, I know. He’s used it from the start.”

  “I went through my clippings, Rudy. That song wasn’t mentioned in any of the articles.”

  His uncle inspected a figurine. “Police have to hold back a few secrets, kid.”

  Jacob digested that, let none of his niggling doubts show in his expression. “Riker never mentioned it to me.”

  “But then you’re not a cop, are you?”

  “No.” A portion of Jacob’s tension eased. “No. Why that song, Rudy? Did anyone ever ask Coombes?”

  “Yeah. He took the question in stride, like all the others. Angels in the song; angels on the airwaves. Said it just came to him, the connection.”

  “Bull.”

  “Judge didn’t think so. Prosecutors should’ve tried to trick him. They should have asked him about ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing.’ If he didn’t do it, and he’d answered the same way, they’d have had him. I don’t think anyone was looking too hard to break his story. Confessions are a bugger.”

  Satisfied, Jacob stared unseeingly at the floor. His mind wheeled and dove like a hungry seagull. When it dove to a picture of Devon in her white nightgown, however, he yanked it back. He did not love her, dammit. It was only his conscience that compelled him to check on her before she left the studio.

  “You got a smoke?” Rudy demanded grumpily, turning out his pants’ pockets.

  Jacob regarded the mess of bric-a-brac, household goods, books and clothing as he tugged on his leather jacket. “You quit, Rudy. If you need to keep your hands busy, you can repack these boxes. If not, I’ll get Ben and Sadie to do it tomorrow.”

  Rudy’s
canny eyes gleamed. “Slow days at the Beat.”

  “I’m overstaffed, but—” he shrugged “—it’s Christmas.”

  The gleam dulled. “You’re right, boy. He’s setting you up. Like it or not, we have to deal with that. But the impersonation’s got to stop. You’ve been walking in a minefield for too long. It was bound to blow sooner or later.”

  Zipping up, Jacob waded through the chaos to his uncle’s side. He hesitated only slightly before replying. “I might—” His jaw tensed. “I’ll tell her the truth.”

  Was that relief in the older man’s eyes? Hell, after a chat with Dugan, Rudy probably considered his own nephew a suspect in the case. And why not? Hadn’t he, somewhere in his gut, suspected Rudy?

  “Truth’s always best, Jacob,” his uncle grunted. “She called the police station last night, you know. Dugan told me. Asked for Riker first, then me.”

  “Terrific,” Jacob pulled on his gloves. “I’ll give her my gun. She can shoot both of us at the same time.”

  But guns and bullets were the very last things on his mind as he jogged across the snowy city parking lot five minutes later. He had a name in his head and a question that had been nagging at him almost as persistently as his feelings for Devon. If not a Christmas murder victim, then who the hell was Angela?

  “I HAD THE information sent, my dear. These are police facts, not national secrets.” Armed with a file of faxes, Alma plunked her ample backside next to Devon’s on the older woman’s office sofa. “Here’s a summary of all seven Christmas Murder cases. The victims worked in radio broadcasting as you know. All were under thirty and quite pretty.” She made a huffy sound. “Trust a man to look for youth and beauty in a female he intends to kill.”

  On a late lunch break from Hare and Woden, Hannah glanced at her sister. Devon responded with a small shrug of acceptance. Best to let Alma blow off her excess steam, then they could all get back to work.

  Closing an eye, Alma jabbed a finger at Hannah who was biting into her egg salad sandwich. “I had words with Roscoe this morning. That young man has a great deal to answer for. I should be told when he plans to work late.”