She Loves Me Not (31 page)

“What is the man's name, Ma'am?”

“It's Brookline. No, Brook
man
,” she remembers. “David Brookman.”

There's a slight pause. Then, “Did you say David Brookman?”

“Yes.”

“And you say he's trying to kill your friend?”

“No, he's trying to
save her.
He just went after her. He told me that somebody's trying to—”

“Ms. Kirkmayer, we have an A.P.B. on David Brookman. If you know where he is, you've got to tell us where to find him.”

Dazed, Christine murmurs, “But he said—”

“You can't believe a word he said. The man is a suspect in three murders, including the one on Shorewood Lane.”

B
ill's boots make a squeaking sound as he steps out into the snow on the concrete porch in front of her in-laws' house.

Rose shudders.

“Careful, Rose. It's slippery.” He grasps the black wrought-iron railing with one gloved hand and reaches for her with the other. “Here, let me help you.”

Standing in the doorway, Rose pulls on her camel-colored dress coat, gazes out into the stormy night, and draws a shaky breath.

It's going to be okay.

Leslie knows where I am. The cops are probably already on their way.

“Rose?”

She blinks and looks at Bill Michaels. He's standing a yard away from her at most, his arm outstretched, leather-encased fingers ready to take hers.

Snow is falling hard, whirling all around him, already coating his hair and his eyebrows above his glasses.

Netta Bradley's voice drifts back to her.

“I've hired somebody new, Rose. He's starting next week, just in time to help us with the summer rush. He just moved to town and he's such a handsome young man. Single, too. He's a homosexual, though.”

At the time, Rose had to fight back a smile at the elderly woman's discomfort with the word, and the topic of Bill's sexuality.

“Oh, really? What makes you think that, Netta?”

Looking even more uncomfortable, Netta confessed.
“I mentioned to him that he'd be working with a lovely young widow, and he became very nervous and finally admitted that he isn't interested in women.”

It was the first time Rose heard herself referred to as a widow.

As jarred by that bleak description as she was by the fact that Netta would even consider matchmaking just six months after Sam's death, Rose never thought twice about the fact that Bill came right out and told a potential employer that he was gay.

Why would he do such a thing? It certainly wasn't necessary.

He couldn't know, back then, that Netta was more tolerant than the conservative majority of senior citizens in this small town.

Nor could Netta—or Rose—know that the pleasant young man so eager for a minimum-wage job in the bookstore was really a cold-blooded killer.

“Rose?”

She looks into his eyes. Such unusual eyes, the palest blue-green color.

Why, Bill? Why?

It doesn't make sense.

Maybe she's wrong. Maybe the 7718 page was a fluke. Maybe she's jumping to conclusions, thinking that Leslie meant for her to turn it upside down, the way she did Jenna's calculator that afternoon more than a week ago.

7718.

If you read the numerals as letters . . .

They spell B-I-L-L.

But he's my friend. I can't believe he wants to hurt me. In fact, I won't believe it until . . .

“Are you all right? Angela?”

Angela.

The name again. The name on the necklace.

Leo didn't steal it.

Bill was in her bedroom in the dead of night while she was sleeping.

“No, I'm not okay, Bill.” She slips her violently trembling hands into the deep pockets of her coat. “And my name isn't Angela.”

Behind his wire-framed glasses, wrath flares in his gaze.

It's there only a moment, and then it's gone, his expression as benign as it was before.

But now she's certain.

He's the one.

And the phone didn't go dead just now because of the storm. Bill did something in the basement.

“Oops, sorry. I meant Rose. You'll feel better once we get out of here,” Bill says smoothly, his breath puffing white in the snowy evening air.

Like a smoke-breathing dragon, Rose can't help thinking, gazing at him, wondering who he really is, and why he's doing this.

“I can't go with you, Bill.”

His face is beginning to harden, yet his tone remains casual. “Why not?”

“Because. Because I know. About you.”

She shrinks backward in dread as his familiar features are transformed by a mask of monstrous rage.

“C
an't you drive any faster?” Leslie urges from the passenger seat.

David's eyes are focused on the blinding snow beyond the windshield. It's all he can do to keep the Land Rover between the white lines on the road.

“If we wind up in a ditch, we won't be able to help Rose,” he mutters, checking the wiper switch to make sure they can't go any faster. They're working at top speed, but the snow is coming down hard and fast and it's impossible to see anything.

If what Leslie told him is true—that she knows Rose spoke to her coworker earlier on the phone and could very well have told him where to find her tonight—they may already be too late.

There isn't a doubt in David's mind that Bill Michaels and Clarence are the same man—Angela's lover—and that he killed Olivia, Isabel, and Rose's husband. That Rose is in grave danger is irrefutable. David only hopes—

“Listen!” Leslie turns in her seat, looking over her shoulder. “Do you hear sirens back there?”

He does. Glancing into the rearview mirror, David sees the red lights materialize in the haze of snow behind the Land Rover.

“Thank God,” Leslie says. “Christine must have called them. Pull over and let them pass. They must be on their way to my parents' house.”

David takes his foot off the gas and coasts onto the shoulder. Touching the brake would mean risking a spin on the slick pavement.

The flashing lights and sirens don't pass them by. Instead, the police car follows the Land Rover onto the shoulder.

“What are they doing?” Leslie asks frantically, up on one knee, her body twisted around to see the car behind them. “Why aren't they going to help Rose?”

David is silent, jaw clenched, eyes on the rearview mirror. The squad car's door opens. A uniformed figure emerges in the swirling snow, gun drawn, aimed directly at David.

Speaking over a bullhorn, a voice bellows, “Step out of the car
now with
your hands over your head.”

S
he's afraid.

Afraid of
him.

Delicious power surges through him, electrifying his nerve endings.

“Of course you know about me,” he says, taking a step toward her, giggling when she cowers back into the house. “Tell me, what exactly is it that you know? That I like women? That I was only pretending to be gay so that nosy old lady wouldn't get ideas in her head?”

Rose reaches out to push the door closed.

He easily stops it with his foot, his tone lethal as he warns her, “Don't you
ever
slam the door in my face, Angela. Do you understand?”

“I'm not Angela, Bill. I don't know who . . .”

“Enough, already.” His words drip with disdain. “Stop calling me Bill. And stop pretending.”

“Pretending . . . what?”

He leans toward her, so close he can smell the scent of her breath. Menthol.

He makes a fist, raises it, watches her cringe.

Grinning, he asks, “What's the matter? Did you think I was going to hit you, Angela? I wouldn't do that. I just wanted to show you something.”

He palpitates the fist against his own chest, beating a slow rhythm.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

“What does that sound like?”

“A heart.” Her words are low, voice strained.

“Yes.
Your
heart. So you can stop pretending. I know.” He reaches out and brushes her hair back from her eyes. “I don't like this style. You really should get it cut again, Angela. Cut and lightened. It looked so pretty when you did that for me the last time.” He trails the backs of his fingers down the side of her face.

She says nothing. He can feel her tension, her muscles clenching as he brushes his fingers over her jaw.

“You lied to me, Angela. About Christmas. About everything.”

“I never lied to you, Bill!” she protests. “I never even—”

“Stop it! Stop calling me Bill. We don't have to pretend anymore. You can say my name.”

“But I don't . . .”

“Say it!”

“Bill. Bill Michaels.”

“Michaels.” He grins with renewed delight at his own clever pseudonym. “Before it's too late and I forget to ask . . . how do you like my little tribute to the Snow Angel?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Michael. The angel.”

She looks blank.

“Oh, come on, Angela. Don't tell me you didn't figure it out.
Michael.
Mr.
Gabriel. Clarence.
They're all angels . . . just like you. The snow angel.”

“The snow angel?” She shakes her head, pretending to be baffled.

“And Clarence is the angel in
It's a Wonderful Life.”
He waits. She's still acting as though she's blank. Exasperated, he says, “Your favorite movie, did you forget? We watched it together. I chose the name Clarence for you. I chose all of them for you. I did everything for you. And you . . . you chose
him.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Him. Your husband.”

Her voice is barely audible.
“Sam?”

“Sam?” He bursts out laughing, dismissing the name with a wave of his hand. “Not
him.
I'm talking about David. Your husband.”

“My husband's name is Sam,” she says in a strangled whisper.

“Oh, I don't think Sam is anybody's husband anymore. Sam burned to a crisp that night, from the inside out.” He is gleeful, remembering. “And I've got something even better planned for David. A fate worse than death, as far as the Brookmans are—what's the matter, Angela?” he asks, noticing her expression.

“How do you know about Sam?” She's gone motionless, staring at him as though the light has suddenly dawned.

“Oh, I guess you had to be there,” he says glibly, remembering that stormy January night.

You had to be there . . . and he was.

The temperature was hovering just below freezing: cold enough for the rain that had fallen all day to freeze in a sheet of glare ice on the pavement and encase every tree, every shrub, every overhead wire with a thick, glassy coating.

Fresh from dumping Olivia McGlinchie's body in the northern woods, he meandered out to Laurel Bay, undeterred by the slick roads, eager to lay eyes on his next conquest.

Instead, as he crept around the perimeter of the house, looking for a glimpse of her through a window, he came face-to-face with her husband. The man was clutching a baseball bat, using it to knock ice crystals from an overhead wire.

He can still hear the outraged echo of Sam Larrabee's last words.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“My husband died in a freak accident.” Her voice is fraught with pain.

He shrugs. “If you say so.”

Sometimes it still amazes him that he managed to pull it off. It happened before—something snapping inside of him, throwing into a rage. It happened with Dad, and with Angela. And it happened again, with Luke Pflueger, under startlingly similar circumstances.

But he never made an actual decision to
kill
Sam Larrabee.

He simply reacted to the attack when Sam hurtled himself forward. They scuffled on the rock-hard, frozen ground. He managed to get hold of the bat, and then it was all over. One good swing to the back of Sam's head, and the other man went sprawling.

As he stood over his unconscious victim, panting, contemplating his next move, it happened.

The ice storm—and what he likes to consider divine providence—intervened.

That high-voltage cable coming down just yards away from Sam was as fortuitous as the abandoned taxicab, engine running, on all-but-deserted East 66th Street.

He approached it cautiously as it lay sparking on the ground, thankful for his rubber-soled shoes and the wooden baseball bat so that he could safely—

“You killed him.”

Angela.
He almost forgot she was here. Startled, he looks up and is taken aback to see that the fear in her eyes has been replaced by a flinty glare.

Odd, considering that he's the one with the upper hand here.

“I killed him,” he acknowledges. “What's the matter? Do you miss him?”

“You . . .
bastard.
” Tears have sprung to her eyes, yet any lingering vulnerability is rapidly giving way to palpable outrage.

“Don't worry, Angela. You're going to see Sam very soon, if you care that much. But I'm afraid you're going to have to wait for David. He's going to his own private hell, and I'd be willing to bet they give him twenty-five years to life. If he's lucky, he might get time off for good—”

He breaks off abruptly, finding himself staring into the barrel of a gun.

T
hrough a haze of illness and fear, Christine can hear sirens piercing the night as she stands at the darkened window. She can see nothing but a curtain of blowing, drifting snow and the dim outline of the Larrabee house next door.

“Do you think there's a fire, Christine?”