One Summer (44 page)

The watcher knew that his destiny was to destroy that triangle. Only when that was accomplished would the watcher find peace.

What made it easier, from the watcher’s viewpoint, was that Rachel Grant, like Johnny Harris and indeed most other individuals, had no idea of the existence of any part of themselves besides their surface personalities. The notion of reincarnation, of destiny and redemption, which the watcher embraced and knew to be the ultimate, universal truth, was beyond their understanding. Only a few enlightened souls, of which the watcher knew himself to be one, were permitted the full spectrum of divine knowledge. Most would never see any deeper than their surface
personalities, which were only tiny facets of the vast gem that was the complete soul.

The watcher thought of the matter this way. From the air, islands dotting the ocean seemed complete in themselves. Only when one delved beneath the surface of the sea did one discover that islands were no more than the tips of gigantic mountains that the water concealed from view.

Everyday personalities, the watcher considered, were like islands. But only the most perceptive were permitted to see what lay beneath.

The sounds of lovemaking suddenly ceased overhead, distracting the watcher from his ruminations. Briefly he glanced upward, yearning to complete his preordained mission of murder at that very moment. Hate, furious biting hate for the betraying soul that lived in Rachel Grant, warred with instinctive cunning.

Cunning won. Moments later, the watcher turned and walked quickly away.

There would be another, better day for vengeance.

51

I
t was around four o’clock when Johnny drove Rachel and her mother back to the hospital in her car, and he was beat. Rachel had worn him out. He grinned to himself as he thought how unlikely he once would have considered that. She’d called the shots this time, and he had loved every minute of it. But now she seemed revitalized, while he felt as if he’d been worked over with a baseball bat. Muscles he hadn’t realized he had ached. He needed a hot shower and a change of clothes and something to eat. He would see Rachel safely up to her father’s room and then make a quick trip to his apartment. He would be back within the hour, and it didn’t get dark until nearly six. She would be safe in the hospital room with her mother and sister and a dozen doctors and nurses within call. It was still daylight out, after all. He’d been with her nearly every waking and sleeping minute for the last week. He could leave her for an hour without fear.

Rachel was perfectly agreeable to being left. She leaned in through the window to kiss him while her mother walked ahead toward the hospital entrance.

“No talking to strangers, okay?” He was only half-joking, but she grinned as she straightened.

“I won’t.” She flicked his nose with a finger and turned to follow her mother into the hospital. Johnny, stopped
illegally in the patient pickup lane, watched her go. She was wearing a simple skirt and blouse of bright turquoise silk with a silver-studded leather belt around her waist and silver earrings. Her ass swayed sassily as she walked in her modest high heels. Johnny ogled it with appreciation. All he had to do was watch her walk away from him, and he got the hots for her all over again.

On the way to his apartment, a few fat drops of rain splattered against the windshield. Johnny turned on the wipers and peered up at the sky. It had not rained in weeks, but from the looks of the clouds that were blowing up in the east, that was about to change. Good—they needed the rain.

He parked the car behind the hardware store, climbed up the outside steps to his apartment so as not to have to deal with any crap from anybody in the store who might feel like dishing it out, fished his mail out of the box by the door, and went in. Wolf greeted him with an exuberance that nearly knocked Johnny back down the steps.

“I missed you, too,” he told the ecstatic animal, rubbing him fondly behind the ears. Cocking a wary eye at the sky, he decided that it would be best to take Wolf for a quick walk now before it really began to pour. Accordingly, he put a leash on the dog and headed down the steps with him. More drops splattered on the asphalt as he trailed Wolf over to the grass.

By the time Johnny returned with Wolf to the apartment, big wet blotches dotted his shirt and jeans. If the size of the drops were any indication, the impending storm would be a doozy.

Back inside, he stripped and jumped in the shower, then emerged to towel himself dry and pull on clean clothes. The temperature had dropped considerably since his and Rachel’s afternoon idyll, so he shrugged into a long-sleeve denim shirt and started to button it up. As he did he cast his eye over the mail scattered on the table. Mostly junk, with a few bills thrown in. A large manila
envelope had been forwarded from the prison. Seeing the name of the place stamped onto the upper-lefthand corner of the envelope was enough to give him the willies.

But all that was behind him now, and he meant never to look back. The stain would be expunged from his record, just as he meant to expunge the memory from his mind. Those years belonged to another Johnny Harris. Rachel and her love, and the promise of a new life together, had made him a different man.

Just thinking of Rachel mellowed him out. With a puff of his cheeks he blew away his tension and concentrated on the good things his life now held. First and foremost was Rachel. He’d take his leather jacket back to the hospital with him for her to wear when she left for the night. The turquoise silk had been pretty, but he doubted that it was very warm.

For no real reason at all except that he wanted to throw the offending envelope away, Johnny ripped open the communication from the prison. His stomach tightened as he did so—what did he expect, a summons to return? he asked himself sarcastically—but it was no more than his forwarded mail. The groupies had no way of knowing that he’d been released. He wondered how long they would continue to write.

His most faithful correspondent had written again, Johnny saw as he dumped the six or so letters out onto the table. She always used purple ink on pink stationery, and she always perfumed her letters. The scent she used was a sultry floral, and Johnny wrinkled his nose at the potency of it as it reached his nostrils. He didn’t remember the smell being this strong when he’d read her letters in prison. Maybe being confined in the manila envelope had somehow intensified it.

The smell continued to tease him as he slitted the envelope with his thumb and glanced over what she had to say. For courtesy’s sake, he supposed he should drop her a note advising her that penning further love epistles to him
was a waste of time, but he knew even as he entertained the thought that he wouldn’t do it. He would never glance at his prison mail again, either. It brought back old memories, bad memories that made him angry. He would throw it away unopened, like the rest of the junk mail, and get on with his life.

He wondered, as he perused the letter more from habit than any real interest, what kind of woman became infatuated with a stranger, and an imprisoned murderer who never once wrote back to boot. This one had written to him without fail every single week for the ten years he had been inside, and she had assumed from the very first an intimacy that he found ludicrous. Hell, he didn’t even know her name because she never signed her romantic outpourings with anything other than “eternally yours.” She never addressed him by name, either. Her letters invariably began, “My very dear.” From her tone, she might almost have considered them husband and wife.

Weird. Johnny grimaced and tossed the letter back onto the pile. Then he went into the kitchen to wash his hands to rid them of the cloying smell, picked up his jacket, and headed out the door.

He was halfway down the stairs, moving fast because of the splattering raindrops, when realization hit him and he froze. He had smelled that perfume before and not just on those letters. It had been recently. Since he had returned to Tylerville. On some woman. He knew it as well as he knew that rain was falling on his head, but he couldn’t for the life of him immediately match a face to the memory of the smell.

Wheatley had asked him if he had any old girlfriends living around here, and his answer had been, at least to his knowledge, no. But Johnny, his mind working at lightning speed, suddenly came face to face with a harrowing possibility.

Whoever had written him those wacky prison letters might well be here in Tylerville. Maybe she had always
been here. Maybe she—not he, but
she
—had killed Glenda and Marybeth. Because she fancied herself in love with him.

Whoever she was, he had been in her company more than once in the few weeks since his release from prison. The memory of the smell tantalized him as he tried to recall exactly when. But the scary thing was, he could not. It could have been almost anybody, almost any woman in town. Any store clerk. Any of the hardware store customers he had waited on. Any of the Grants’ friends.

Maybe the letters could be traced. Johnny pivoted, running back up the stairs, fumbling to fit his key in the lock before he finally succeeded in getting the door open. Leaving it ajar behind him, he rushed to the table and picked up the letter and its matching envelope.

The return address was a Louisville post office box. That shouldn’t be too hard to check out.

Letter in hand, Johnny went for the phone. Picking it up, he dialed, and when a bored female voice at the other end answered, he said, “Give me Chief Wheatley.”

52

“R
achel!”

Rachel was heading for the elevators when she heard her name called. Looking around, she saw Kay emerging from the glass doors behind her. With a welcoming smile and a little wave, she stopped, waiting for her friend to catch up.

Kay did not smile back. As she drew closer and Rachel was able to discern the expression on her face, she started to feel alarmed.

“Is something the matter?” she asked sharply.

“Oh, Rachel, I hate to be the one to tell you.” Kay looked unhappy. “There’s been some trouble. Johnny—Johnny’s been arrested.”

“Arrested? For what?”

“I’m so sorry, Rachel. Apparently they’ve found some new evidence that he really did kill those women.”

“But—he just left me to go to his apartment.”

“They stopped him right around the corner, handcuffed him, and took him to jail. I happened to be driving by and saw the whole thing.”

“That’s not possible!”

“I’m really sorry, Rachel. But you know, maybe they’re wrong. I know you think he’s innocent. Maybe he is.”

“I have to go to him. Oh, no, I don’t have a car. Johnny was driving mine. Kay, I hate to ask you, but—”

Kay smiled and curled a hand around Rachel’s arm. “Don’t be silly! What are friends for? I’ll be glad to drive you over. Come on.”

Rachel never even noticed being splattered by the first raindrops Tylerville had seen in a month as she hurried with Kay out the door.

Rachel pulled her seat belt around her as Kay maneuvered her tan Ford Escort out of the parking lot. The wind had picked up and the sky had darkened over the course of the last hour, presaging a much needed storm. The swish of the wipers and the steady plop-plop of enormous raindrops self-destructing on the windshield made a soothing background noise for the conversation in the car. From the back seat, the spicy scent of a bouquet of pink carnations filled the air. Rachel assumed Kay had a delivery to make after she dropped her off.

“They’ve made a mistake,” Rachel said impatiently. “Johnny did not kill either of those women! I’ve told Chief Wheatley time and time again that he was with me when Glenda Watkins was killed.”

“I believe you,” Kay said, shooting Rachel a sidelong glance.

“I thought the chief did, too. I can’t believe he thinks I would lie about something like this—even to protect Johnny! I wouldn’t. I’m not.”

“I never thought Johnny killed the first girl. And I don’t think he killed the second one, either.”

“Then you’re one of the few …” Rachel’s voice trailed off, as she noticed their direction for the first time. “Kay, where are you going? You’re headed out of town.”