Page 19 of The Morning After (Savannah 2)

Touching the whore’s underthings, running the silk through his fingers brought a welcome warmth to his blood and he closed his eyes for a second, lifted the panties to his nostrils, felt the thickening

in his groin. As much as he’d hated her, he’d lusted after her. All normal men did.

And what do you think is normal about you, you useless, stupid sack of shit?

The voice withered his erection and he forced himself not to hear the taunts that still reverberated through his mind. He folded Barbara Jean’s underclothes and slipped them into their plastic sack, then gave himself a swift mental kick for losing the ring…damn it all to hell, he’d wanted that ring, fancied himself fondling the glittering stones as he’d watched the news about Barbara Jean Marx, ex-model, rich wife’s bizarre death. But somehow, he’d lost the damned ring. Another mistake. His jaw tightened.

Slipping her clothes into the second drawer, he noticed the drops of dried blood on the bureau and touched them lightly with the pad of his thumb. As he often did. Just to remember. But he was careful not to wipe the drops too hard, needed them to stay where they were, even the ones that ran down the side. A few dark stains settled over the lip of the top drawer and around the keyhole, but he didn’t open it. Would never. That private space was sacred. Could not be violated. He touched the chain at his neck and the small key that hung from it.

Sometimes it was tempting to take off the links of worn gold and slip the key into its lock and listen as it clicked. The old drawer would open slowly, sealed from the blood that had once been sticky, and then he would…

Not! He would never open the drawer.

All the recording lights were glowing. He could leave. Assume his other life. He licked his lips and tried to slow the rapid beat of his heart as he took one last look at the news and the havoc he’d caused. Because of a whore’s gruesome death. Again, he imagined her waking in the coffin, terror riddling her body. He could have hauled the coffin to the surface, been her hero and taken her then. She would have done anything for him. Spread her legs. Sucked his cock. Anything.

He felt a rush of desire, a jet of lust running through his bloodstream, and he imagined Pierce Reed in bed with her.

Bastard.

The Survivor’s mouth was suddenly dry. He couldn’t pull up any spit as he stared at the televisions and remembered plunging the needle into her arm…. She’d collapsed, crying out as she lost consciousness and…A series of beeps brought him out of his reverie. He snapped back to the moment and realized he was running out of time. Quickly he clicked off the alarm on his watch, slid out of the room and, as the recorders taped every moment of the news, walked quietly through the dark corridors that were little more than tunnels. He braced himself to face the cold winter morning and the new day.

Finally, his time had come.

CHAPTER 4

Quietly he stole through the shadows. It was just twilight and he was dead tired and if he were caught, he’d probably lose his job, but Reed slipped through the back gate and, finding a spare key where Bobbi had always kept one behind the hose bib, he let himself into the garage, stepped out of his shoes and walked into her kitchen. The shades were pulled down and the light over the stove was burning softly, just as always. He hadn’t been in the cottage in months and yet it was familiar. The only reason he’d risked visiting her house was that he was certain he’d be thrown off the case. The second the D.A. caught wind that he’d been intimate with a victim, Reed would be diverted to other cases and all the information on Bobbi’s death would be off-limits to him. Which galled the hell out of him.

He walked in stockinged feet across the worn hardwood, through a small eating space to the living room, arranged just as he remembered, with overstuffed furniture, colorful throws and plants growing in every corner. Newspaper sections were scattered on the coffee table. He didn’t disturb them, but noted that it was the morning edition of the Savannah Sentinel, dated two days earlier. Bobbi, or whoever had been in the cottage, had been reading about the local news. The boldest headline was about a reconstruction project in the historic district and the byline was Nikki Gillette. One of the most irritating women he’d ever met, one of those dogged, do-anything-for-a-story reporters who was ever trying to get ahead. She had the looks for it. Curly red-blond hair, bright eyes, tight ass, but she was trouble. Not only an aggressive reporter, but the daughter of the Honorable Judge Ronald Gillette.

Reed carefully swung his penlight past the paper to a plate with a nearly burned, half-eaten piece of toast. Jelly congealed in one corner of the plate, and a cup of coffee, again half drunk, showed lipstick stains on its rim. Breakfast. Two days earlier.

He walked into the master bedroom. The sheets were rumpled, half off the bed, a pillow on the floor, but he knew from experience that it wasn’t a sign of a struggle. Bobbi always left her bed in disarray. “I think it’s sexy that way, don’t you?” she’d asked him once as she stood on her tiptoes and kissed the bend of his neck. “That way the bedroom always looks like you’ve just made love and are ready to go at it again.”

She’d never seen his military-sharp bed or austere room with a single dresser, thirteen-inch TV, half-mirror and rowing machine.

The closet door was open. He swept the penlight through the interior. Dirty clothes were falling out of a basket on the floor, dresses hung neatly above. Using a cloth he opened the dresser drawers and found underclothes, sachets, T-shirts and shorts. Nothing out of the ordinary. Her nightstand gave up a vibrator, creams, Kleenex, a broken picture of her dressed as a bride and a worn copy of the Bible. Nothing unusual. Nothing incriminating.

The bath was as untidy and smelled of a perfume he recognized. Bottles of makeup, hair products, aspirin and lotion littered the small counter. A hairbrush, filled with dark hair, was pushed against one of those magnifying mirrors that lit up. In the medicine chest were the usual ointments, creams, feminine products, fingernail polishes and medications: Vicodin, Percoset and a full month’s supply of birth control pills.

Obviously not used for quite a while.

The claw-footed tub with its recently added showerhead needed to be scrubbed.

But there was nothing out of the ordinary.

The second bedroom, used as a study and general catchall, was a mess, but not out of the ordinary for Barbara Jean Marx. This cottage was “temporary” she’d told Reed on the last morning he’d seen her. They were lying in the bed, tangled in sheets, with the smell of sex hanging heavy in the air. “Just a stepping-stone to something bigger once the divorce is final.”

“I thought it was,” he’d said.

“We’re hung up on a technicality. I want more money. He doesn’t want to pay it.”

“You told me it was over.”

“It is.”

“I mean legally.” He’d been pissed. Really pissed and had thrown off the bedsheets. While she was trying to explain, he’d pulled on his clothes and left. He remembered walking outside into the middle of a September downpour, the rain heavy, steamy and hot.

Now, he walked through the rooms one last time, taking note of the scene. He’d come back, of course, with McFee and Morrisette. If he was allowed. But he’d needed to see for himself what Bobbi’s last day had been like. He walked into the kitchen and saw the answering machine. The light was blinking. It was the kind of machine with a tape and he knew how it worked. A simple machine with a great “keep as new” feature. He could play the tape and no one would be the wiser. Using a cloth, he hit the button. The machine hissed and chortled as the tape rewound. There were two hang ups before a woman’s voice blasted through the kitchen.

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