As Darkness Fell

“Apparently it didn’t do a lot of good.”

“The cop told me to leave, but when he got sidetracked, I went back to my job. The public has a right to know.”

“So you ignored police orders. Then what?”

“I looked at the body, and…” Damn, she hated to admit her weakness in front of this detective.

“You threw up in the bushes.”

“How did you know that?”

“You were quite a hit last night. Wasn’t a cop on duty who didn’t notice the reporter in the red dress.”

Cops. Killers. She’d impressed them all, except for Detective Sam Turner. He kicked a small pebble. It flew through the air, coming to a stop just inside the yellow police tape that circled the area where the body had been found.

Bloodstains were still visible, though they’d probably fade after the rain. But the images in Caroline’s mind were still as clear as if Sally had still been lying in the grass. She shuddered and stepped away.

Sam took her arm. “Steady now. We’ll be through here in a minute.”

“Do you ever get desensitized to murder?” she asked.

“No. If I did, I’d get out of the business.”

The admission made him seem more human somehow. It meant he wasn’t all roar and rumble. Might even have a heart beneath that brawny chest. “Have you ever been on a case where the killer contacted someone he’d seen at the crime scene?”

“No, but it’s not unheard of. I remember reading about one case on the West Coast a couple of years ago. Serial killer called a female news anchor before every crime.”

“What happened?”

He shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

She didn’t buy that for a second. “He killed the woman he’d called, didn’t he?”

For the first time since they’d been in the park, he turned his attention totally to her. “Nothing will happen to you, Caroline. Not unless you let this man draw you into his sick games.”

The first drop of rain fell, quickly followed by others. They splattered on her nose and ran down her cheeks. Sam grabbed her hand and started running toward the car. But the storm’s fury didn’t wait. The rain blowing into her face stung like needles, making her contact lenses blur until she could barely see. By the time they reached the car, her clothes were soaked and water from her hair was dripping down the back of her neck.

Sam started the ignition and turned on the heater, but he sat for a minute before putting the car in gear. She had the feeling there was something else he wanted to say, but if there was, he changed his mind. He kept his gaze straight ahead as he pulled away from the curb.

Don’t get drawn into this.

Good advice, only the killer had drawn her in the second he’d singled her out and delivered his note. With that one act he’d robbed her of any chance of the objectiveness reporters were supposed to maintain. Nonetheless, she’d keep things under control, report the news and do a good job of keeping the citizens of Prentice informed.

And pray he didn’t contact her again.

“I TALKED TO every neighbor on the block,” Matt said, scooting his notes in front of Sam. “Everyone claims not to have seen anything until the television news van arrived.”

Sam picked up the notes the young detective had made, reared back in his chair and propped his feet on the desk. “Did you check to see if anyone in the immediate area has a record?”

“All the adults are clean as a whistle. One of the teenagers on the block has a battery charge against him.”

“Details?”

“Gregg Sanders. Age seventeen—sixteen when the charges were filed. Attacked his stepfather with a baseball bat when he caught him fondling his little sister. Stepfather denied it. Kid got off with a warning, so I’m guessing the judge believed him, instead of the old man.”

“Where’s the stepfather now?”

“Out of the picture. Mother divorced him and has no idea where he’s living, but is fairly sure he’s not in Prentice.”

“Any known sex offenders in the neighborhood?”

“None that showed up in the records.”

“What about the search around the crime area?”

“We bagged some items. A couple of cigarette butts, an old sock, some chewed gum, a beer bottle, that kind of stuff.”

“Send them to the crime lab in Atlanta. See if we can get a DNA reading from any of them.”

“You got it. Anything else you need before I head out?”

Sam glanced at the clock. Five after five. Knockoff hour for the day shift. Time was when a cop on a murder case wouldn’t have bothered to look at a clock. But those were guys from the old school. Today’s cops had lives. They worked their shifts and that was it. They were probably better off for it. But then, so were the criminals.

“Guess that’s it,” Sam said. “Got a big night planned?”

“A hot date with a cute little redhead who works for Dr. Wolford. What about you?”

“I might cut out early and get some sleep.”

They both knew he wouldn’t. Sam would stop in at the Grille for the daily special, if he bothered to eat at all. After that he’d be back here at the precinct, going over the sketchy evidence.

Sam dropped the notes on the table as Matt left, then walked to the window and stared at the rain. It wasn’t falling as hard as it had been when he and Caroline had been caught in it, but it was steady.

Caroline Kimberly. She should have no meaning to him at all except as she related to the murder case. Only now, standing here staring at the rain and thinking about how she looked soaked to the skin, he knew she affected him in ways he couldn’t begin to define.

Not simple, like plain old-fashioned lust, though there was no denying he’d felt a tightening in his groin when she’d opened the door this afternoon.

But it had been even worse driving her home from the park, and she’d looked a little like a drenched, stringy-haired waif at that point.

Frustrated by the needs pushing at him from all directions, he crossed the room, opened his desk and pulled out the framed picture of Peg. He used to keep it on top of his desk, but he got tired of answering questions about who she was. So he kept it here for special times, when he needed to remember what life was supposed to be like. What it would have been like now if he hadn’t made that one fatal mistake and let a killer sneak into their lives.

The kind of mistake Sally Martin must have made. Had she trusted a stranger? Prentice was the kind of town where that could easily happen. An hour southwest of Atlanta, but a world away from big-city problems. More churches than bars. Clean streets. Landscaped lawns. Citizens who still held to the old Southern ways and treasured their past as if it were a gem to be polished and put on display.

Had the killer merely left the interstate and driven the twelve miles along the state highway, winding up in Prentice with the urge to kill tearing at his soul? Or was it someone Sally knew and trusted? A betrayed lover?

But if there had been a lover, the Martin family had never heard of him. Their story was that Sally had flunked out of Auburn University last semester and had come home to get her act together before returning to school. Now she was dead.

Sam had no reason not to believe the parents. Their grief seemed heartbreakingly genuine. Besides, Sam’s gut feeling was that the killer had picked Sally randomly or from some search criteria only he understood. He’d stripped her naked, but there were no signs of sexual assault.

Still, Sam was fairly sure the perp was male. The MO wasn’t that of a woman. The knife, the nudity, even the marks on the breasts all indicated that the killer was a guy, either one strong enough to overcome the victim or charming enough to have convinced her to go with him willingly.

And unless Sam had this all wrong, the guy wasn’t through with Prentice yet. Nor was he through with Caroline. Sam had no evidence to support that or even to prove that the note left on the reporter’s window was from the killer. It was all instinct. The stock and trade of any homicide detective worth his paycheck.

His mind went back to Caroline Kimberly. He’d done some checking on her this afternoon. She was new at reporting. New to Prentice, as well. Could she be…?

No. No way was she in this with the killer. And he doubted seriously she’d faked that note just to draw more attention to her reporting. Still, it never hurt to check out all the angles.

After all, his instincts weren’t infallible. Peg’s death was proof of that. He walked back to the desk and made a note to himself to call Sylvia in records tomorrow and have her run a more thorough check on Caroline Kimberly.

BY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON Caroline had run out of things to write about Sally Martin’s murder, but the town had not run out of their avid fascination for details. She didn’t know if it was due more to their fear or their curiosity for the morbid, but the Prentice Times was selling twice as many papers as usual.

John was pleased with her work, but he kept pushing her for more articles. He wanted interviews with Sally’s neighbors, her family, the people she worked with, even her high-school friends. It was almost to the point where anyone who’d ever passed Sally Martin on the street could get his or her name and opinions in print.

“I’m making a Starbucks run,” Dottie said, walking through the office with pen and notebook in hand. “Who wants what?”

Dottie was their teenage assistant who came in two afternoons a week to earn extra credit for her journalism class. Caroline used her to proof copy occasionally, but mostly she filed or ran errands for John. And went for coffee for those who wanted something other than the thick black goop John brewed.

“A caramel latte,” Caroline said.

“Nonfat milk, medium?”

“You got it. I’m a creature of habit.”

“In the old days reporters all lived on straight black coffee,” John said.

“Yeah, yeah, we know,” one of the grunt reporters said. “And walked a mile in the snow barefoot to get a good story.”

That brought a rumble of laughter. Caroline went back to her typing. She was trying to stretch five good sentences from one of Sally’s friends from Auburn into half a column. She didn’t know about the old days, but being a reporter these days was tough enough.

Ron Baker stopped by her desk, which he made a habit of doing a couple of times a day when she was in the office. She usually didn’t mind. He was even newer at the paper than she was and didn’t quite fit into the camaraderie routine yet.

Fitting in was always harder for the nonreporters, but Ron was nice. Pushing fifty, a little shy, but a hard worker. His main job was seeing that the newspapers got to the carriers and the dispensers every morning, but he was a kind of jack-of-all-trades and John took advantage of all his skills. Today he was putting up some new shelves in the supply room.

Ron looked over her shoulder. “You must get tired of writing about that murder every day.”

“I wouldn’t, if there were something new to say.”

“No new leads, huh?”

“If there are, the cops are keeping the news to themselves.”

“What do you think of that detective they put in charge of the case? Sam…something or other.”

“Turner.” What did she think of Sam Turner? Now that was an interesting question. Rude. Irritable. And sexy. “I haven’t been around him enough to form an opinion yet.”

“Not doing much about finding the killer, is he?”

“Hopefully there’s more progress than we know about.”

Ron nodded. “Guess I better get back to my shelves.”

But after he left, the question of Sam Turner stayed on her mind. Maybe she should do an article on him. He was certainly fascinating in his own way. Kind of a man’s man, but there had been that minute in the park when he’d picked up on her fear and had actually seemed protective. And the way he’d looked at her when she’d first opened the door in the satin dress had been a little heated. He’d recovered fast, though.

The bottom line was that he was all business. Which probably wasn’t a bad thing when there was a killer on the loose. She just needed to remember that any interest he showed in her was all business, too.

She still had Sam’s card in her pocket, but fortunately she hadn’t had to call him to report any more contact from the weirdo who might or might not have been the killer.

But since she had his card in her pocket, perhaps she should call him. She was a reporter, after all, and he was the detective in charge. If he had new information, the public had a right to know. And this wasn’t because now that she was thinking about him, she really wanted to hear his voice or have him suggest they get together. Sure he was sexy and masculine to the core, but this was business. All business.

She pulled the card from her handbag, checked the number and punched it in.

“Sam Turner.”

“Hi, Sam.”

“Who is this?”

“Caroline Kimberly, reporter with the Prentice Times.”

“What’s wrong?”

The concern in his voice surprised her and made her feel a little guilty for calling the number he’d given her to use in case of an emergency. But she’d called, so she had to say something.

“Nothing’s wrong. I was just working on an article for tomorrow’s paper and I thought you might have a statement to make.”

“If you want a statement, call someone in PR.”

“I’ve tried that. There is no one in PR, only whoever happens to be manning the phones.” The silence grew awkward. “I’m sorry if I caught you at a bad time.”

“You didn’t. I mean you did, but I don’t know when a good time would be. The only statement I can make is we haven’t made an arrest.”

“Does that mean you have a suspect, or suspects?” She was really pushing it now.

“It means I don’t have a statement except that we haven’t made an arrest.”

“Okay. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“Yeah.”

The man’s conversation skills were abysmal.

“If you get any more messages,” he said, “call me immediately. It’s important that you do that. Don’t play with this guy, Caroline. He’s dangerous. Remember that.”

There was the concern again. Sam Turner was a hard man to figure.

“I promise I’ll call. I’m just your basic coward when it comes to dealing with murderers.”

“Good. Cowards have a much better chance of living to old age.”

She thanked him again, said goodbye, and that was the end of that. Feat accomplished. Results nil. Still, Sam stayed on her mind.

“Do you have that copy for me?” John asked, stopping at her desk with cup of goop in hand.

“Give me twenty minutes.”

“Make it ten. You write too much filler, anyway. Cut to the chase. It makes what you have to say more powerful.”

She went back to her typing, but it dawned on her that perhaps Sam should have been a reporter. If fewer words translated to powerful, he’d have won a Pulitzer.

CAROLINE BREATHED a sigh of relief as she pulled the car into her garage and killed the engine. It had been a long day and she was ready to slip out of the black pumps that were starting to squeeze her toes, pour a nice cold glass of chardonnay and watch a rerun of Will and Grace.

The garage, a fairly recent addition, sat a few yards behind the two-story house in the spot where a carriage house had been. The walk from the car to her back door was a pain when the weather was cold or rainy, but tonight it was clear and the brisk air felt good.

Only, tonight the area next to the garage was darker than usual. Much darker. For some reason, neither of her outdoor lights were burning, though they were on a timer and should have switched on at dusk. Probably a temporary power outage had them off schedule. Fortunately, she’d left the outdoor light over the back door on so she’d at least be able to see well enough to fit the key into the lock.

Something moved in the bushes behind her. Her heart slammed against her chest, but when she turned, it was only a cat that she’d startled from the bushes. Constant talk of murder had her spooked.

As she neared the house, she noticed a small package propped against the back door. She stopped in her tracks. The package was probably perfectly harmless, but no one had ever left one there before.

What if it had been delivered by the same man who’d left the note on her windshield? He knew what kind of car she drove. Maybe he also knew where she lived. He could be here now, lurking somewhere in the shadows and watching her the way he’d obviously watched her that night in the park. She couldn’t see him, but it was almost as if she could feel his presence.

Her heart pounded so loudly that if he was anywhere near, he could surely hear it. Probably even smell her fear. A killer. And her only defense against him and his knife were the keys in her shaking hand.

And there was nowhere to run.

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