Where Angels Rest (23 page)

“Fuck the media. I don’t run investigations for their amusement. Fuck the media,” he said again, but then he cursed and handed Erin’s black bag to Schaberg. “This is Dr. Sims’s laptop. She was at my place until early this morning, when Quentin took her to her motel. She says she was on the motel Wi-Fi during the morning hours. Check it. And check with the clerk in the lobby to see if anyone remembers her getting a candy bar from the snack machine before seven-thirty. After that, we can put her at Engel’s, and then with me.”

“Got it.”

Nick looked at his watch. “It’s twelve-thirty in the morning.” Justin’s life was down to less than three days. “Go home, get a few hours of sleep. First thing tomorrow, we do this: Jensen, keep the phone team going locating girls who left Mansfeld College. Schaberg, go see Dorian.
Make sure he wasn’t so pissed at Jack that he might’ve killed him. I’ll take Margaret. I’ll also take Calvin again, but I’ll want one of you to take him after me. You, Chris. I’ll strong-arm him, then you play nice.”

“Calvin,” Jensen whispered, shaking his head. “I don’t think he’s got the brains to set up something like this.”

Nick said, “Calvin
does
have the brains. In fact, his brain might be superior to any of ours. But even if he’s Erin’s vandal or Jack’s killer, he has nothing to do with murdered women starting back twelve years.” He turned to Jensen. “Check in with Reverend Whitmore. Did you ask him to go see Margaret?”

“I had to leave a message. The church office was closed today and he wasn’t home.”

“Okay. Go run him through his story again, see if he gives up anything else now that Jack is gone. Make sure he’s taking care of Margaret. Oh, and Roger, get with the Cleveland narcs and see if you can get a lead on someone who might’ve dealt to Jack.”

“What about Leni Engel?” Quentin asked. “She really on the list?”

Nick pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I don’t know, but I need to talk to Becca anyway, so I’ll talk to Leni.”

Before they broke up, Quentin said, “We’ve still got a note to figure out. Someone pointed us at Shelly Quinn.”

Nick thought about it. He didn’t like it, but couldn’t help the direction his mind was going. “That sounds like a scorned wife to me. First thing in the morning, she’s the one I’ll talk to.”

Schaberg looked surprised. “You’re gonna go jack up a grieving widow? You’re a cold son of a bitch, Mann.”

“I’m a pissed son of a bitch. Someone’s fucking with my town.”

Erin could hardly see the words anymore. They blurred on the page. From fury, from fatigue. The Senator had composed every detail, right down to dosages of medicines and the root of her supposed psychoses. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back against the pillow on the guest bed, trying to color the blow-offs of the past decade with that knowledge.

“It doesn’t help, does it?” Nick’s voice. No, it was Luke. They sounded alike.

“What doesn’t?”

He propped a shoulder against the door frame. “Knowing that there’s a reason no one listened to you. It doesn’t get your brother off Death Row.”

Erin marveled at how clearly he’d read her mind. “The week’s not over yet.”

“He’s a lucky man, your brother.”

“Hardly.”

“No, he is. Most people would have written him off by now.”

“That’s what Nick tried to tell me,” she said, looking down at the stack of reports. “But it doesn’t feel that way.”

Luke nodded, then cocked his head. “Are you sleeping with Nick?”

Erin stared. She couldn’t seem to form a response.

“Hmm,” he said. “Not yet. But soon.”

A nervous laugh popped out. She would have liked to think of some smart and sassy retort, but all she could come up with was, “How could that possibly be any of your business?”

Luke smiled. “Just making sure I know the rules. My brother has a caretaker complex. If you’re the one at the other end, well…” He made a hands-off gesture.

“He has Hannah to take care of.”

“Sweetheart, go look in the mirror. There’s a helluva big difference between taking care of you and taking care of Hannah.”

“I don’t need for Nick to take care of me.”

“Good.”

She blinked. Must have misunderstood. “I thought—”

“Everyone needs Nick. Allison needed him. Hannah needs him. Our mother needs him. This whole fucking county needs him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“
Want
him,” Luke said. “That’s what he needs.”

The distinction took a moment, then Erin’s skin shrank a size. The idea of
wanting
Nick Mann sent a purely sexual rush through her body. “You’re jumping to conclusions,” she said, trying to ignore that unexpected wave of sensation. “Nick and I barely know each other. We’ve never been on a date or held hands or kissed or anyth—”

Nick walked in. Erin stopped mid-sentence. “God.” She buried her face in her hands.

“Hey,” Luke said, when Nick stopped behind him. Erin inched her cheeks from her hands and Luke smiled. “I got her thinking about sex for you.”

“Get out,” Nick said.

“You’re welcome,” Luke said, and disappeared down the stairs.

Erin forced herself to look at Nick, who propped a shoulder against the doorframe, filling the doorway. She knew her cheeks were the color of raspberries; they felt hot and flushed. She noticed the dip of his eyes to her breasts and wished she hadn’t taken off her sweater. Her nipples came to tight peaks.

Nick crossed to the bed. “Never kissed, huh?”

“Well, I—”

He bent down, and in the next breath his lips were on hers, hands pulling her up and dragging her into his arms. The lingering soreness in her bones dissolved in a rush of sheer sexual pleasure as his lips worked hers, stoking a flame that spread through her veins like fever. She opened her mouth and invited him in, sharing breath in a tangle of tongues and colliding heartbeats. One of his hands got under the tank, smoothed around her ribcage and found a nipple, and Erin arched into his arms as he rolled it between a callused thumb and forefinger.

A moment later, he pushed her away. Hunger burned in his eyes and his breath was ragged, but he stood back from the bed and shook his head as if trying to flick something off. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

“High time I got that out of the way,” he said, and left.

F
IVE IN THE MORNING.
Tuesday. Big day. Today, Rebecca would become the ninth angel.

At long last.

The Angelmaker moved about on tiptoe, though no one was around. Only the kitchen was awake at Hilltop House. Rosa was making her cinnamon rolls, getting the coffee and spiced cider going. Leaving Calvin asleep in their apartment.

The barn was silent as a tomb, the only light spilling in from a security bulb for the parking lot outside. The Angelmaker climbed the stairwell and entered Rosa’s apartment, stopped and listened, then slipped into Calvin’s room like a wraith. A pendulum clock ticked off the seconds beside his bed—
tick-tock, tick-tock
—a reminder that this morning, timing was everything. Engel’s Eatery opened at six and Rebecca worked the early shift. She’d be going to work—walking eight blocks in the still-dark morning—within the next half hour.

The Angelmaker would catch her on the way. No mistake this time.

And Calvin would provide the alibi.

A faint touch of his arm and Calvin came from sleep like a shot. “What?”

“Calvin, it’s me. I’m sorry to wake you, but I need yo—
Ahgh!
Ah, Calvin. My head, my head.”

“Wakeupwakeupwakeup.” One word.

“Yes, wake up. Please.” The Angelmaker reached to the nightstand and turned on the light. Calvin wore a gray polo shirt with plaid flannel pants, and the creases of a wrinkled pillow marked his face. He looked dazed. “Five-oh-two a.m., five-oh-two, five-oh—”

“I know. I’m sorry. But I need help.”

Calvin was waking up. “What-what?” he said.

“I can’t stand this pain, this headache.” Eyes squeezed closed. “I bought my pills… I must have…”

“What-what? Five-oh-two…” He was concerned now. He’d never seen this kind of pain.

“I need my pills, Calvin. My head…”

“Pills-pills-pills.”

“I bought them, but I threw away the bag on my way from the store. Outside, in the trash can on the sidewalk. Oh, Calvin, I must have thrown the pills away.”

Calvin frowned, his eyes never settling in one place.

“Ahh… Calvin, please. Can you ride over there and find them? You can go before school.”

“Five-oh-three, Tuesday, November thirteenth, two-thousand-twelve. Pills.”

“Oh, thank you.
Ahh…”
A spasm of pain. “At the Kroger on Shallowford. You know the one?”

Calvin nodded, his face a mask of concern. He’d probably never seen a person having a migraine before. “Find pills.”

“No, don’t go through the trash. Someone will think
you’re crazy. Just bring the whole bag from the can outside the door. I’ll go through it here.”

“Trash bag, trash bag… Five-oh-three…” He was starting to panic, worry getting to him.

“Hurry, Calvin,” the Angelmaker pleaded, and knew he would.

Rebecca tied her tennis shoes in double knots and kept to the left of the stairs: the boards on the right creaked like an old woman. The whole stupid house made noises—the door hinges squeaked, the banister groaned, and if you turned on the fluorescent light in the kitchen, a thin
buzz
rattled in the ceiling. Becca had never understood how such small sounds could awaken her mother in the middle of the night, but they did. And if her mother didn’t hear them, little Miss Prissy-Perfect-Katie did. Becca had been caught more than once slipping out for the night.

But she wasn’t a kid anymore. She’d graduated high school, lived away from home. All right, she was back for now, but still, she should be able to make her own rules, do her own thing. She shouldn’t be reduced to sneaking around her own house like a rat. Her mom didn’t see it that way, though.
As long as you’re living in my house, young lady, no matter how old you are, you’ll follow my rules…

Sure.

She skirted the creaking boards without touching the banister, and didn’t turn on the kitchen light. Got her purse off the pie safe. Ace would meet her down the block. He’d promised. This thing with Carrie had scared him a little—cops from Cleveland all on his case and Sheriff Mann busting his balls just as a matter of course, getting the Crawford County sheriff to join in. Ace wasn’t
any Prince Charming or anything, but he had wheels and knew a guy in Buffalo who owned a club where she could get work, and he didn’t have anyone trying to tell him what to do every minute.

And, he loved her. He’d told her that.
Ah, baby, don’t press charges, I didn’t mean to hurt you… I just needed you so bad
…

She used the side door instead of the front, and glanced at the clock on the way out. Five-twenty. Ace had said five-thirty.

Better hurry.

The clock was a worry. Kroger was less than a ten-minute drive, but it would take Calvin longer on a bike. What if the timing was off? What if Calvin changed his mind, or stopped to talk to someone? What if his mother left her cinnamon rolls in the oven and came back to the apartment and found him gone?

No. Relax. There was no reason to doubt that Calvin would do exactly what he was asked to. He would need about twenty minutes to get to Kroger—just long enough. And when he came back, he’d hand over the trash bag from the can outside. Alibi-in-a-bag.

The Angelmaker walked through the empty spot in the garage where Jack’s truck used to sit and climbed into the Saturn, setting the box that would serve as bait in the backseat and heading into town. At the restaurant, two cars were parked out back, but neither one was Rebecca’s. She usually walked.

Five-eighteen, the dash clock said. Should be soon.

The Angelmaker rolled past Engel’s Eatery and drove onto the residential streets a few blocks east, into the neighborhood where kids had lemonade stands in the
summer and went trick-or-treating in the fall. Kept an eye out for Rebecca along the way, then pulled past her house and circled the block, searching the dark streets, peering down every lane—

And there she was. On the corner two blocks away. But she wasn’t walking to work. She was just standing.

The Angelmaker pulled around the corner, parked facing the wrong direction and watched in the rearview mirror. What was she doing?

She had a suitcase.

Laughter bubbled up. Unbelievable. The girl was waiting for someone. Running away? There she stood, alone on the corner, just waiting.

Perfect.

The Angelmaker nudged the headlights to bright, pulled around several yards behind her and bumped the front tire of the Saturn against the curb. Moved into the passenger seat while the glare was in Rebecca’s eyes and rolled down the window. The faux mother-of-pearl handle of the stun gun nestled in hand, like the touch of a lover.

“Rebecca.”

She turned toward the voice; recognized it. Would she
know
? Better move fast, don’t give her time to think it through.

She walked up to the car, squinting into the headlights. Glanced around. She probably hadn’t counted on anyone seeing her. “What are you doing here?”

The box. Get the box. “I can’t believe we ran into you. We were just taking this sculpture to the restaurant before it opened.” Make her think someone else was in the car. Hold out the box. “Your mom asked for it. Here.”

“What?” Rebecca asked. It was weird, but not so weird
as to be dangerous. She reached to the passenger side window for the box.

Pzzt
—the stun gun sizzled against her hand. Rebecca dropped.

The Angelmaker’s spirit soared to the sky. At long last. Finally. Rebecca wouldn’t be watching anymore.

S
HORT NIGHT
. Nick woke Tuesday before dawn, keenly aware that Justin Sims’s life had slipped closer to ending and that saving it had taken on new significance. It wasn’t only that Justin may well be innocent of Lauren McAllister’s murder. It was also that Justin’s sister had gotten under Nick’s skin. Deep.