Beachcomber (14 page)

The sound of church bells had awakened her at noon, minutes ahead of the alarm clock. As she lay in bed listening to the pealing chimes, it occurred to her that she had missed Mass despite all the promises she’d made to God the night before. Wincing at the soreness in her shoulder as she headed groggily for the bathroom and a shower complete with a plastic bag jury-rigged on her shoulder to protect the wound, she’d sent an apology winging skyward, along with a thank-you for keeping her alive. She only hoped God didn’t take offense at what was basically a
catch-you-later.

It was now just after twelve-forty-five on one of the hottest, sultriest Sunday afternoons Christy had ever experienced, and she was headed to the sheriff’s office at his request to look at some pictures of known violent offenders in the area. Not that it was going to do any good. As she’d told him and everyone else who would
listen, at no time had she gotten a good enough look at the man to identify him from a picture or anything else.

And even if she could identify him, she would be afraid to, although she hadn’t told the sheriff
that.

Sleepy little Ocracoke Village was really amazingly crowded. The line of people waiting to get inside Howard’s Pub for a late brunch snaked across the building’s porch and down the steps to curl around the sidewalk. She went around it, then cut across the street, dodging a group of bicyclists who no doubt hoped that a spot of exercise would help them work off their own Sunday lunches. Two little girls still in their church dresses with their mother between them clasping their hands crossed the street in the opposite direction, hurrying past Christy as they sought to join the brunch line. Next door, the Shell station’s parking lot was full of, among other things, a lot of oversized vehicles towing trailers hauling grown-up toys like ATV’s and boats. Christy eyed them all grumpily. She, personally, was not having fun in this steamy vacation paradise. Her head ached, her shoulder throbbed, and she was spooked to her back teeth.

The blast of air-conditioning that greeted her as she pushed through the door into the sheriff’s office was a relief. Even the gray-speckled linoleum floor and the institutional-green cinder block walls looked cool. She’d left the inn less than fifteen minutes ago and already she was wilting. Or maybe melting was a better word. She was, as they called it here in the South, glowing, which meant that her skin sported a fine sheen of sweat. Courtesy of the hotel gift shop, she was wearing
a white bikini as underwear beneath a Day-Glo orange T-shirt decorated with dancing clams and white shorts, all of which the humidity had plastered to her skin. Her hair clung damply to the back of her neck, and she pushed it behind her ears impatiently. Even her feet in their strappy sandals seemed to be sweating.

To the left of the door, the receptionist’s desk was empty. Behind it, through the open door of an office, she could see three men: Gordie Castellano, Sheriff Schultz, and Aaron Steinberg. The first two were in uniform, the third in plaid Bermuda shorts and a white polo. The sheriff, a beefy man of about sixty with flat Slavic features and a full head of white hair, was seated behind a metal desk. The other two were ranged on either side of it, and seemed to be arguing heatedly about some papers that were spread out in front of the sheriff.

“… don’t need this,” Castellano stabbed a vehement finger down on the papers, glaring at Steinberg all the while. Sheriff Schultz glanced up, saw Christy, and interrupted the men’s argument by standing up.

“Well, Ms. Petrino, how ya feelin’? You get any sleep in your hotel?” He came around the desk toward her, smiling genially.

“Some.” She produced a mechanical smile. His bluff heartiness was slightly grating on approximately four hours’ sleep, but he’d gone out of his way to assist her earlier and she appreciated it. Of course, it didn’t help that, like the other two men in the room, he fit the general physical description of her attacker. “Thanks again for getting me a room.”

“Anytime.”

“I hear you had another real bad experience last night.” Steinberg looked her up and down, and his eyes widened. He turned excitedly to Castellano, who had nodded a greeting. “You see, I told you, this is real. Look at her. She fits the type. Dark hair, slim, twenties, attractive—”

“That is the biggest bunch of crap,” Castellano said. His gaze swung to Christy, and to her discomfort he looked her over. This was her first look at him in a good light, and she saw that his black hair was cut military style and his blunt-featured face was not unattractive. He glanced back at Steinberg. “So she’s slim and has dark hair. So are lots of women. So what?”

“I told you, she fits the type.”

Castellano rolled his eyes and glanced at her. “Don’t let him scare you to death. He’s got serial killer on the brain.”

“I don’t know, Gordie, maybe Aaron is on to something.” Sheriff Schultz took Christy by the arm and steered her toward his desk. “Of course, he could be adding two and two and getting five.”

“What’s this about being dark-haired and slim?” Christy discreetly pulled her arm from the sheriff’s hold. As of last night, all stocky men officially gave her the creeps. He pulled an upright wooden chair into place for her in front of his desk, and she sat.

“That’s the type he likes. The type he goes after. All of them, the girls who are missing, look alike.” Now Steinberg thumped the papers on the desk, looking triumphantly at the other men. “Look at these pictures and tell me if Miss Petrino here doesn’t fit the mold.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Christy’s heart skipped a beat as she took a good, long look at the papers spread across the desk. From her vantage point they were upside down, but there was no mistaking that they were photographs of young women. Slim, attractive young women with dark hair. The heading on every one was a bold MISSING. Beneath the pictures was identifying information. From the look of the paper, the pictures had been printed out via a computer.

“Damn right, I’m serious,” Steinberg said. Then, with a quick glance at Christy, he added, “Sorry about the language. Didn’t mean to offend.”

“This serial killer thing’s got Aaron here pretty well het up,” the sheriff added in a semiapologetic tone, meeting Christy’s gaze. “ ’Course, if it turns out to be true we’ll all be het up.”

“And I say it’s nothing short of criminally stupid to go spreading rumors until we know for sure what we’ve got here, which we don’t,” Castellano growled. “Besides, it’s not right to discuss this in front of Ms. Petrino, we’re just scaring her.”

“Rumors, schmumors. If that’s coincidence I’ll eat your truck.” Steinberg made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the desktop. “There’s eight of them. Eight over the last three years. Within a two-hundred-mile range up and down the coast. Five just this year here in the Outer Banks. Ms. Petrino should know about this because it concerns her own safety. It’s a matter of public safety!”

“I hate to say it, Gordie, but there’s a case for it.” The
sheriff shook his head. He picked up a picture. Christy saw that it was a head and shoulders shot of a pretty, college-age girl with long brown hair and a dreamy look in her eyes. “Take these last two: Elizabeth Ann Smolski and Terri Lynn Miller were juniors at the University of Georgia last year who came here two weeks ago for a long weekend on Nags Head and disappeared after going into a bar for a couple of drinks. Last night Elizabeth turned up dead on our beach, some seventy miles to the south of where she disappeared. You saw her body. You know what happened to her. And Terri’s still missing.” He picked up another picture and tapped it. This one was of a girl of similar age with short, spiky black hair—as far as Christy could tell, the only one with short hair in the bunch—and an infectious grin. “How do you explain that, if we don’t have ourselves a serial killer?”

“He’s going to say it was a domestic,” Steinberg said in disgust.

“All I’m saying is that Elizabeth Smolski had just broken up with her boyfriend, it was a pretty messy split, and the boyfriend was in Nags Head the day the girls disappeared, according to their friends,” Castellano said. “We can’t locate this guy. His friends, his family, his roommate—no one knows where he is.”

“Elizabeth Smolski had bite marks all over her! She’d been kept alive for two weeks, during which time she was tortured and starved! Are you saying her boyfriend did that?” Steinberg thumped a fist on the desk, making the pictures—and Christy—jump.

“All I’m saying is that we better explore every other
possibility before we start scaring people with stories about serial killers, ’cause if you go putting this in the paper the economy’s going to go straight down the toilet.” Castellano’s face was tight with tension.

“What, do you think Elizabeth Smolski’s boyfriend killed her, then a couple of hours later attacked Ms. Petrino in her house? I’d say that’s a lot less likely than us having a serial killer in the area.” Steinberg glared at Castellano, who glared back. Steinberg’s gaze swung to Christy. “Or do you think these were two separate, unrelated attacks? Maybe Ms. Petrino has a murderous ex-boyfriend too?”

The suggestion, clearly intended to be satirical, was so clearly within the realm of possibility, that for a moment Christy just sat there looking back at him, stunned. She’d never quite considered the matter in that light, but—
she did have a murderous ex-boyfriend.
From everything she’d been able to uncover, Michael’s criminal involvement had been of the hands-off variety, but it had involved overseeing everything from prostitution to smuggling and distributing drugs and guns to ordering the killing of those who got in his way. The question was, had he ordered her to be killed?
Michael?
Was he behind what had happened last night? Christy had to bite the inside of her lip hard to keep from shuddering.

She’d been picturing herself as the victim of a faceless, organization-ordered hit. Now, suddenly, she wondered if the face behind it could be Michael’s. Not that it mattered when it came right down to it: whoever had ordered it, a contract on her head was a really bad
thing. She’d almost rather be worrying about a serial killer, she decided in despair. At least, if she went home, she’d lose the serial killer. A contract on her life was like having a terminal disease—it followed right along with her wherever she went, and, unless a miracle occurred, sooner or later she was going to wind up dying from it.

“Ms. Petrino?” Sheriff Schultz spoke, but they were all three looking at her now with varying degrees of frowns. Christy almost panicked, wondering what her expression might have given away.

“No, I can’t say that I do,” she replied, and was proud of how cool she sounded. “And besides, I didn’t see much of him, but I saw enough to know that the killer isn’t any boyfriend I’ve ever had. And I’m all but one hundred percent sure that the man on the beach and the man who attacked me are one and the same.”

“See?” Steinberg’s eyes gleamed triumphantly at Castellano.

“You just want to sell more papers,” Castellano said disgustedly.

“All right, you two, let’s agree to study this a little bit more before we do anything rash like put a story about a possible serial killer in the paper. Maybe the DNA results on Elizabeth Smolski will help us out when they come back. In the meantime, Ms. Petrino and I have business. Excuse us, would you?”

“Yeah, sure.” Castellano glanced at Christy while Steinberg gathered up the pictures. “You staying at the cottage tonight?”

Not by the hair of her chinny-chin-chin. And why
did he want to know? Her suspicion meter went up a notch where he was concerned.

“I got her a room at the Silver Lake,” the sheriff told him. “ ’Course, it’s just for tonight.” He turned to her. “Will you be staying with us any longer than that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, wishing he hadn’t seen fit to share the name of her hotel. “My plans are kind of up in the air right now.”

“Aunt Rosa has a couple of extra bedrooms.”

“My wife and I have an extra bedroom, too, if you’d care to be our guest. And I know Elaine would surely love the company,” the sheriff said.

“I’d chime in, but Bud here has a much nicer house. And Elaine can cook,” Steinberg added with a wink.

Christy’s gaze encompassed all three men. The thought that popped into her head when she considered spending the night in proximity to any one of them was,
No way.
She wasn’t ready to trust any of them to that extent, not even the sheriff.

“Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind,” she said.

Castellano and Steinberg left the office, and she went through the mug shots Sheriff Schultz had for her. Being alone with the sheriff was nerve-racking, and she looked at the photos quickly. Several of the men pictured were beefy and dark-haired. None of their faces looked familiar. Of course, the fact that she’d never actually seen a face might go some way toward explaining that.

“Well,” he said in obvious disappointment when she got up to go. “It didn’t hurt to look. Listen, I’ve been thinking: if you’re concerned about your safety, I can
probably spare a deputy to go around with you today. It’s Sunday, and Sunday’s usually kind of slow, except for the incidents last night, you know, but there’s not really a whole lot we can do with it until we get some tests back.”

A deputy as escort would be great, except for the fact that she was headed to a mob-ordered rendezvous.

Truly regretful, she managed a smile and shook her head. “I think I’m safe enough in broad daylight.”

Sheriff Schultz frowned. “I think so, too, but you never know. You run into any trouble, you give me a call.”

He pulled a business card out of his wallet and scribbled something on the back. Then he handed it to her.

“This is my number here in the office,” he said, pointing to the front of the card. “This”—he turned the card over and ran his finger down the series of numbers he’d just written on the back—“is my home number. This is my cell phone. This is my pager. You call me anytime you feel like it, you hear?”

Christy nodded, accepted the card, and tucked it carefully into her purse. Then she said good-bye and left. It was still as hot and humid as a steambath outside and the street and sidewalk were still packed with cheerful vacationers, but Christy was all but oblivious to her surroundings now as she walked back to her car. She was still picking up vibes from Gordie Castellano that she could only characterize as
off.
But their significance was greatly reduced by the fact that she could also imagine both Aaron Steinberg and Sheriff Schultz himself in the role of her attacker. In fact, she thought
semihysterically as she paused in the act of opening her car door to glance around at the happy-camper-filled street, about a quarter of the current population of Ocracoke seemed to fit the description. It freaked her out to realize, vibes notwithstanding, that her attacker could be anybody, anybody at all.