Sleeping Beauty (20 page)

As soon as he asked for copies of the local paper for the month and year David had given him, the librarian, a short, plump brunette in her late twenties, nodded.

"The Moore girl's murder," she said knowledgeably. She turned away and began scanning the shelves behind the desk. "We've got it separate from the regular files because there was so much interest in it. Not so much now, but for the first few years there was quite a demand for it And people still come in now and again."

She slid a thick black notebook off a shelf and carried it over to the desk. "It was before my time, of course. I only moved here a few years ago, but my husband, Jim, he went to school with the Moore kids. He was a couple of years behind the murdered girl. He says the whole town was in an uproar for weeks. I'm from Detroit, and it seemed kind of odd to me that one murder could have such an effect on a town.'' Her shrug was self-deprecating. "But, after you live here for a while, you start to understand."

"Murder's a big deal in a small town," Neill said automatically. The word "murder" was spinning in his head. He'd considered the possibility, of course, but even after David had told him that Brooke's death had made the papers, he'd still thought it might have been an accident or even suicide. Suicide, especially, could certainly leave terrible scars on those left behind.

"And this was a particularly awful one," she said, shuddering a little. "And I suppose it didn't help that they never caught the guy."

"No. That makes it worse!" Neill murmured, thinking of the cases he'd written about, of the survivors' need to see the killer caught and brought to justice before they could start putting together the pieces of their own shattered lives.

"It certainly doesn't help." She continued more briskly, "We don't check the book out, but you can make copies if you want. The copy machine is on the west wall, just past the children's section. We close early on Wednesdays, so you've only got about an hour."

Neill carried the notebook to one of the oak reading tables and pulled out a chair. Aside from the librarian and the elderly gentleman he'd seen earlier, who was now dozing gently, he had the library to himself. He set the notebook down but didn't immediately open it. Tapping his fingers on the cover, he thought of Dorothy's comment that he might not like what he found out. He had an uneasy feeling that her words might turn out to be prophetic.

His jaw set, he opened the notebook's cover.

Despite the volume of clippings, it really hadn't been a complicated case. Gruesome enough to provide for some extremely lurid press coverage, but the actual facts available were fairly concise.

Brooke Moore had been an eighteen-year-old high school senior. She was a cheerleader, homecoming queen, ran track and was a member of the National Honor Society—the ideal American teenager. The grainy black-and-white news photos showed her in a cheerleading costume and on prom night, on the arm of a thin, serious-faced young man who Neill could barely recognize as David Freeman. If you could believe the press, she was beloved by all her teachers, adored by her classmates, and the pride and joy of her family.

And then she disappeared.

Brooke had attended school that day, and some of her friends remembered seeing her as they left the campus. They'd offered her a lift home, but she'd told them her brother was picking her up. But he'd lost track of time and was half an hour late, and, when he got there, she was gone. Assuming she'd grown tired of waiting and had walked home, Jack had gone out for burgers with friends. Their parents had assumed that Brooke was with her brother, and it wasn't until he came home alone that anyone felt concerned.

Reading between the lines, Neill could guess that it had taken several hours for the concern to become real worry and then for the fear to come.

There would have been calls to all her friends, a check of the local hangouts—not many of those in a town the size of Loving. When that turned up blank, the fear would have begun. Some of the calls would be repeated. Are you sure she didn't say anything about going somewhere? Friends would be calling each other, eager to share the news that Brooke Moore was missing and where on earth could she have gone?

He imagined that, in a town like this, it would have taken awhile for the possibility of foul play to really sink in. Though it looked like the sheriff had done everything by the book, Neill was willing to bet that he'd considered it a waste of time, had been fairly sure that Brooke would turn up safe and sound sooner or later. Only as one day became two, and then three, and she was still missing, would local law enforcement have absorbed the fact that they might be dealing with a serious crime. In a big city, that would have been not only the first thing they thought of but the first thing they believed. But in a town this size, where everyone pretty well knew everyone else, major crime was fairly rare. Stolen cars, an occasional robbery, domestic violence—those were the big crimes in a town like Loving.

It was almost two weeks before there were any leads. Neill's stomach rolled as he read the account. A farmer had stopped to repair a flat tire on a road about two miles out of town and had found a girl's hand lying in the ditch. After he finished losing his lunch, he left the flat tire to mark the spot and drove straight to the sheriffs office. Brooke's father identified the hand by the ring his daughter had worn.

If they'd been clinging to any hope of seeing their daughter alive again, it must have disappeared then. It was two days before they found the next piece of her, about a mile from where the hand had been. After that, it was a matter of combing the roadside ditches, tracing the killer's path by the body parts he'd strewn behind him, like litter thrown from a passing car.

There was a big write-up on the funeral, which had been attended by nearly every citizen of Loving, as well as by press from every major wire service. Neill squinted at a fuzzy picture of the bereaved family and wondered if he was reading too much into the fact that they stood without touching each other—Olivia in a simple black dress, her spine rigid, her face absolutely still, her husband standing slumped next to her, head down, expression hidden. A younger, slighter Jack, his fair hair failing over his forehead, his face holding the blank emptiness of someone in shock.

And a ten-year-old Anne, standing at her brother's side, her eyes huge and bewildered, thin little legs sticking out from beneath the hem of a black dress. He wondered if Olivia had gone shopping for proper mourning clothes and then thought perhaps he was doing her an injustice. She seemed to be an ice-cold bitch now, but maybe Brooke's death was largely to blame for that.

The remaining clippings talked about the ongoing investigation, which had gotten nowhere. According to the police, aside from the body itself, they had nothing to go on. No one had seen anything. No one had noticed any strangers in town. They questioned everyone who knew her, but no one seemed to have a motive. Annoyance over being beaten out for Homecoming Queen rarely resulted in dismemberment.

The gaps between the clippings grew wider, until a little over a year later, when there was a flurry of new information over a murder with a similar m.o. in Oklahoma. The FBI was called in, and there was speculation that both killings were the work of a serial killer. But if they had been, he hadn't killed again—or his victims hadn't been found—and Brooke's death became another unsolved crime, the case file officially open but unofficially dropped, because the police had nowhere to go with it.

Neill sat, staring at nothing, his hand on the closed notebook. It explained a lot, of course. Anne's reaction to the attempted mugging, her near hysteria over the thought of having people looking at her, remembering. He could guess what it had been like for her. That's the murdered girl's sister, you know. Wonder how the family is holding up? Wonder if she knows what happened, poor thing. Most of it wouldn't have been intended unkindly, but for a sensitive little girl to suddenly find herself the cynosure of all eyes must have been painful.

Had her family understood that, in some ways, her sister's death had been hardest on her? Or had they been so absorbed in their own pain that they hadn't recognized hers?

And how was she going to react when she found out that he wasn't a struggling freelance writer but had instead made his name—and a considerable amount of money—writing books about exactly the kind of thing her family had gone through?

She should have felt awkward, Anne thought, as she exchanged greetings with the bank's other employees. After the emotional storm she had gone through the night before, she should have cringed at the thought of seeing Neill again. She should have been so embarrassed by her own loss of control that she couldn't bear to speak to him, she decided, as she put her purse in the bottom desk drawer and booted up her computer. She'd sobbed in his arms like a frightened child, allowed him to see the fear she barely allowed herself to acknowledge. Then she'd all but propositioned the man, telling him that he didn't have to sleep on the sofa, inviting him into her bed. And he'd turned her down.

Oh, but the way he'd turned her down. When we become lovers, I don't want any gratitude in the mix. When. Not 'if'' but 'when.'

Anne's mouth curved in a secret half smile. She supposed there were women who would be offended by the arrogance of that statement, but she wasn't one of them. To her, it had been reassuring. He wanted her. He'd said so. And he cared about her, because, if he hadn't, he would have taken her up on her invitation instead of spending what she was sure must have been a mostly sleepless night on a sofa that was a good foot shorter than he was. So it was more than just deske on his part. And, heaven knew, it was so much more than that on her side. Just how much more was something she shied away from defining, even to herself.

She was half in love with him—maybe more than half. It didn't matter that she'd only known him a matter of days. She'd always pictured herself slipping slowly into love— a long, leisurely process of getting to know someone, finding out their likes and dislikes, learning their goals and dreams. In her mind, she'd seen it as if through a camera lens coated with petroleum jelly, a little out of focus, violins playing in the background—everything soft and gentle.

She hadn't expected to feel the flare of lights and colors when Neill kissed her; had never imagined the sharp bite of hunger she felt when he touched her. There was nothing soft and dreamy about what had happened between them. It was bright and brassy. Edgy and needy. Elemental and irresistible. And, for once in her cautious, safe little life, she wasn't going to try to resist.

When we become lovers.

Oh yes, she definitely liked the sound of that.