Page 103 of The Morning After (Savannah 2)

But Jack couldn’t help.

It wouldn’t change a damned thing.

When Reed woke up with a hangover pounding at his skull tomorrow morning, Bobbi Jean would still be dead. The baby would still never have had a chance to breathe a single breath. And Reed would have to live with the fact that somehow, some way, their deaths were his fault. He was the connection. The damned Grave Robber was talking to him. And killing with ease.

But what about Roberta Peters?

How is she connected to you?

He remembered walking through her home and sensed something…a feeling he couldn’t identify. Like déjà vu, but that wasn’t quite it. An unformed idea nagged at him and wouldn’t gel…What the hell was it—something to do with Nikki Gillette? Had Nikki written an article on Roberta Peters? Known her? There was only one way to find out.

He eased off the gas and maneuvered the big car through the city streets, past shops bedecked with Christmas greenery and a few pedestrians on the sidewalks. At the offices of the Sentinel he found a parking space near the employee lot. Nikki Gillette’s Subaru was parked near a short hedge. So she was working late. Again. A fact he’d learned long ago when she’d dogged him on other cases. Ambitious to a fault, she spent more time at the newspaper than at home. But she wouldn’t work all night. Rather than be seen in the offices of the Sentinel where he could again be accused of being the police department’s leak, he decided to wait outside. There was already enough speculation about him as it was. Morrisette wasn’t the first cop to suggest he might be the rat who was filling the press with inside information.

Last summer he’d been a damned hero solving the Montgomery case, and now, less than six months later, he was under suspicion of being a snitch. A classic case of damned if you do and goddamned if you don’t.

He slid the seat back, stretching his legs, and waited, his gaze glued to the front door as people drifted in and out of the brick building where the offices of the Sentinel were housed. As it was late, more people left the building than walked inside.

Reed recognized a few faces. Norm Metzger, wrapped in a wool coat and scarf, drove away in a Chevy Impala while Tom Fink tooled off in a restored vintage Corvette. A kid he recognized as Fink’s nephew…what was his name? Deeter, that was it, Kevin Deeter, arrived in a truck with a canopy and walked into the offices. He wore an oversize Braves jacket and a baseball cap pulled low over his face. Reed watched the kid and noted that Deeter paused just outside of the light mounted over the front door, then fiddled with a cassette and donned earphones. He jammed the cassette into a pocket of his baggy jeans, then pushed open the door and stepped inside.

He was an oddball.

But the city was filthy with nutcases of one kind or another.

Reed settled onto his back and wondered why the Grave Robber was communicating with Nikki Gillette. He had half an ear turned to the police band that he kept at a low volume. What was the connection? Did the killer inherently know that she was hungry, that she was determined to make a name for herself? Had he been watching her? Or did he know her personally?

Condensation collected on the windshield.

What was the significance of twelve?

Gaze never sliding from the doorway, he thought of all the combinations he’d come up with during the past few days. Twelve what?

Months in the year?

Hours in a day? Or conversely, hours in a night?

He bit his lip, eyes narrowing.

Apostles?

Doughnuts in a dozen?

Members of a jury?

Signs of the zodiac?

Inches in a foot?

One, two, buckle my shoe.

Three, four, lock the door.

Five, six, pick up sticks.

And so forth…. What was the twelfth part?

Eleven, twelve,

Dig and delve.

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