Chapter 10
B eth pushed away her empty bowl and linked her fingers across her midriff. “That was delicious. You did your grandma proud.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“What’s your secret?”
“The roux.”
“Would you give me the recipe?”
“Then it wouldn’t be a secret.”
“You’d have to kill me.”
“I’m afraid so.” He paused, then, low and suggestively, said, “Or I would consider a swap.”
“A swap? One friendlier than killing me?”
“A lot friendlier.” His gaze lowered to her mouth, then moved down to her breasts. God, did they entice. All but begging for the gentle squeeze of a man’s hands.
It took every ounce of willpower he had to look up from them into her eyes, which were wide and unblinking. He saw in them that she understood without his having to spell it out: He wanted her. Bad.
Of course, under the circumstances, his licentious thoughts were inappropriate. He got up and carried his bowl and utensils to the sink. Beth did the same, although the implication of the nature of his “swap” and the way he’d looked at her had left her uncharacteristically aflutter.
He turned on the faucets. “I’ll manage this.”
“Let me wash. It’s the least I can do by way of thanks.”
“I would have heated up the gumbo for myself anyway.”
“I need to thank you not only for the meal, but also for getting me to safety tonight. I shudder at the thought of someone nicknamed the ogre.”
He turned off the water and faced her. “I meant it when I said you held up well.”
“You said I’d done okay.”
“I understated.” He gave her one of his brief, crooked smiles, but it was half-hearted, and he seemed reluctant to continue. But he did. “You should never have come down here and meddled in this. You’re out of your element. I don’t mean to be condescending. I hope it didn’t sound like it.”
“It didn’t. It sounded like Max. Exactly like Max.”
“Smart guy.”
“Smart and, by now, I’m sure he’s frantic because I haven’t called him.”
John went over to the cupboard and opened a drawer beneath the shelving. Inside it were several cell phones. He chose one and checked the signal and battery capacity, then handed it to her. “Never been used. You can break it in for me. Go call your boss before he has a fatal coronary.”
He showed her into a bedroom, which was directly off the main room. It was furnished with an iron bed whose white paint was chipped in spots. The patchwork quilt was no doubt handmade. The room was spotlessly clean, but as cluttered as the rest of the cabin with memorabilia that represented generations of family history.
“Does this place belong to you now?”
“By default,” he said. “None of the cousins who are still in the area wanted to maintain it. It was deeded to me by a round of handshakes, nothing official. It’s still on the tax rolls in my grandpa’s name, which was Lamont, not Bowie. No one will find us here.”
“I couldn’t find my way back to the boat.”
“Which is the point and why I keep the place. Take your time.” As he left the room, he pulled the door closed.
She toed off her shoes and sat down on the bed with her bare feet tucked beneath her hips. After taking a bolstering breath, she tapped in Max’s number.
It rang only once before a growled, “Who’s this?”
“Me.”
“Whose phone?”
“John Bowie’s.”
“Says ‘Caller Unknown.’”
“It’s a spare.”
“Huh. If you’re using his phone, I guess you missed your flight.”
“I didn’t take the flight, Max. I changed my mind.”
He cursed. “I was afraid you were going to say that. Where the hell are you?”
He hadn’t asked for details about her current location, so she didn’t volunteer that she was in a bedroom at John Bowie’s fishing camp in a swamp she couldn’t name or find her way out of.
Without embellishment and as chronologically as possible, she summarized her day, leaving out segments of it that she feared would indeed cause a cardiac episode, such as their perilous escape from a henchman called the ogre. She finished by saying, “It’s been a long and eventful day, but I’m all right.”
“Just so I understand, you hadn’t changed your mind about returning to New York until Bowie hustled you out of the airport with what sounds to me like an unacceptable he-man tactic?”
“I’m glad he stopped me, Max. It gave us an opportunity to have an in-depth conversation. I talked him through that case in Galveston that I’d discovered. He knew a lot about it except for the fact that it had occurred on the night of a blood moon.”
“What did he make of that?”
“It got his attention, but he concluded that it was a bizarre coincidence. However, I think he was trying to convince himself, not me. I get the sense that he would love to reopen the Mellin investigation, but he’s reluctant to. I’m not sure why.”
“That’s easy. He knows that if he starts picking at a scab involving the integrity and competence of the police department that employs him, there could be harsh repercussions.”
“More than professional ones, I think. The Mellin case affected other aspects of his life as well.” Before Max could pounce on that, she said, “That’s only conjecture, of course, but I sense that whatever backlash he was subjected to then, he’s still grappling with now. He’s… troubled.”
After a short pause, he said, “Tell me again why you’re on that phone. What’s wrong with yours?”
She’d hoped to gloss over that, but she should have known Max had been ruminating on it. “Mine was out of juice.” She told herself the fib was to prevent him from suffering a medical emergency. “I didn’t want to wait for it to charge before calling you. Detective Bowie lent me one of his spares.”
“Spares? Plural? Charged and ready?”
Tired of the third degree, she snapped, “Yes, Max. So what?”
“This troubled man accosts you at the airport. He keeps spare burner phones handy. Are you sure he’s on the right side of the law?”
“It all sounds a lot worse than it is.” Lord, if he only knew.
He harrumphed, then asked, “This in-depth conversation you two had, where’d you leave it?”
“Unfinished. There’s a lot more I need to tell him.”
“And after you do?”
“I hope he’ll be more forthcoming about the Mellin case.”
Max exhaled, his chest rattling. “Beth. My advice?”
“I’ve already heard your advice.”
“All right then, I’ll give you a heads-up that may make you think twice. I returned from my lunch with the mayor to find Winston Brady waiting on me. Impatiently. He asked if I could explain why the production office had received two calls this morning from people asking about you. The first caller declined to leave his name. Brady didn’t think much about it. But a little while later, he got a call from Tom Barker.”
She swallowed but said nothing.
“That call concerned our new EP because A: He’s accountable to network executives and show sponsors. B: All of them are persnickety and uptight. And C: Brady is an ass-kisser whose main objective is to keep his own ass well covered.
“Sooo,” he continued, dragging out the word, “because he couldn’t reach you by phone, he wanted to know from me why Barker of the Auclair, Louisiana, PD was calling to verify your association with Crisis Point and to ask what you were doing in their fair city attempting to contact one of his detectives, who’s a troublemaking malcontent.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you hailed from Louisiana, that you’d taken some vacation time to go see old friends, and that your trip had nothing at all to do with your work on the show or the upcoming episode. It was nothing more than fluky timing.”
“Did he buy that?”
“In his shoes, would you?”
She imagined Max glowering at her from beneath his eyebrows, which sprouted from his forehead like a shaggy shelf. “I’m sorry, Max. I realize that your relationship with Brady is thorny, and I hate that I placed you in the position of having to lie for me.”
“I’m still in that position, Beth. As long as you’re down there, I’ll be in this position.”
“I realize that, too.” She massaged her forehead while she considered what her next step should be. “I’ll see what happens tomorrow. If Detective Bowie shuts down completely, I’ll have lost my one and only source. In which case, I had just as well come home.”
“Book your flight tonight. Get your tush back here and make nice with Brady.”
“That holds no appeal whatsoever.”
“It has more appeal than unemployment.” He paused to take a breath that trailed off in a gurgle. “As your mentor, I’m duty bound to tell you that it’s time to punt. You’re not going to wear Bowie down. You said so yourself that a hammer and chisel wouldn’t crack that guy.
“And even if he was singing like a canary about in-house corruption and ineptitude in that police department, Brady won’t forget that you pursued that angle without his authorization. You’re already out of his favor, and he doesn’t even know that you’re risking the show’s reputation on a wild hare about red moons.”
That stung. Did Max really have so little confidence in her? She straightened her spine and, in as crisp a voice as she could muster, said, “I’m not ready to punt. I may stay here through the blood moon. If nothing evil happens, and God willing it won’t, then I’ll acknowledge that my hypothesis was a wild hare, and you can say you told me so. You’ll relish that, I’m sure. Right now, I’m exhausted. I’m going to bed. Good night.”
The bedroom and bathroom John used whenever he stayed at the cabin was on the opposite side of the broad living area from the bedroom in which he’d deposited Beth. He’d used the time she was on her call to shower and change into a pair of jeans and an old t-shirt.
When Beth emerged from the bedroom, he was sprawled in his favorite chair. “Coffee’s fresh. Want a cup?”
“Yes, thanks, but I’ll pour.”
As he made to get up, she motioned him back into the chair and went into the kitchen area. She returned with a mug of strong coffee, which she’d liberally doctored with the powdered creamer and sugar he’d set out.
He’d draped a multicolored throw over the upholstered chair nearest his. As she sat down in it, she looked warily at his pistol now lying on the table between their chairs. He said, “I wanted it within reach.”
“You said nobody would find us here.”
“I’ve been wrong before.” He sipped from his coffee mug. “How’d it go with your boss?”
“He’s peeved. He wants me back in New York. Yesterday. Your tactics seem to make him nervous.”
“They make me nervous.”
She laughed softly, then became serious. “There’s been a development.”
When she finished her rundown of their conversation, he said, “Add another reason for me to despise Tom Barker. Not only did he sic the ogre on us, he also put you on the new top dog’s shit list.”
“Well, if my visit here results in a jaw-dropping twist ending to the Mellin story, all will be forgiven.”
“What if it doesn’t result in that?”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that.” Smiling ruefully, she rubbed the fringe of the throw between her thumb and fingers. “Hand knitted?”
“By one of the aunts, who must’ve been color-blind. It’s ugly as all get-out, but not as ugly as the chair’s upholstery.”
“It’s cozy.” She draped the tail of the throw over her feet.
“Are they cold? I can help with that.” He got up and fetched a pair of thick white socks from his bedroom. “They’re clean,” he said as he handed them to her. “They’ll be too big for you, but warm.”
Setting aside her mug of coffee, she slipped off her shoes and pulled on the socks, then wiggled her toes and sighed. “Much better. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
She dipped her head and snuffled a laugh. “Yesterday when you came over to the booth and thanked me for the Coke, never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that soon I’d be thanking you for a pair of borrowed socks.” She tilted her head and regarded him with perplexity. “You didn’t strike me as the type.”
“What type?”
“A man who would keep his grandmother’s gumbo recipe, much less make it. Who would share socks.” She looked over at Mutt, who was curled up asleep on a folded blanket on the floor. “Who would be so fond of his dog. You looked too… um…”
“Mean?”
Her head came back around to him. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.”
“It’s okay. I was trying to look mean.”
“Why?”
“To make the impression I apparently did.”
“On me?”
“Definitely on you. But also on the bartender and the guys shooting stick. I could’ve been walking into a trap.” He cocked an eyebrow. “One laid by someone other than you, that is.”
“Someone like the ogre? Tom Barker?”
Exactly like that , he thought, although he didn’t say so. Restless and agitated, he spread his fingers wide and ran his hands up and down his thighs, dreading like hell the course this conversation was about to take. Since their arrival, neither of them had acknowledged what had brought them here. The meal had delayed addressing the subject. Then her phone call. They’d put off talking about it long enough.
He looked over at her, where she was curled up in the oversize chair. “Tell me about the two abductions that happened in 2018.”
She stopped winding strands of the fringe around her fingers and let them fall into her lap. “In January of that year, a nineteen-year-old woman in Jackson disappeared while riding her bicycle home from her shift at a Waffle House.
“In July, in Shreveport, a woman in her early twenties was seen for the last time walking her dog around the playground of her apartment complex. The dog was found roaming, still on his leash, unharmed. She’d vanished.”
He glanced over at the long folding table where he permanently kept a laptop. He was tempted to boot it up and research those cases, but he was also afraid of being drawn farther in. The less he knew, the easier it was to remain detached.
“They’re regional,” Beth said.
“That’s a stretch.” But not that much of one. He ran a rough calculation in his head. You could drive the distances between those points in one day or less.
She said, “I think 2018 was when he started.”
John came out of his chair, picked up his empty mug, and headed for the kitchen. When he got there, he realized he didn’t want a refill of coffee. Instead, he took a bottle of bourbon from the cabinet. The lip of the bottle clinked against the drinking glass as he poured a shot. He hesitated, then poured a bit more. “Want one?”
“No thank you.”
He took a swallow, then another, loving the burn, the bite, the rush of relief that was too damned temporary. He returned to the living area but prowled around the room, swirling the liquor in his glass.
“What makes you think that’s when he started?” he asked. “What about three and a half years earlier and those two blood moons?”
“I didn’t find any accounts of missing women that coincided with those dates. And—”
“Jesus, there’s an and?”
“And the two 2018 eclipses were particularly significant.”
“I can hardly wait. Why were they particularly significant?”
He could tell she didn’t approve of his sarcasm, but she let it pass. “The one on January thirty-first was also a blue moon.”
“I forgot what that means.”
“The second full moon within a month.”
“Right,” he mumbled into his glass as he took a drink from it.
“They called that January thirty-first eclipse a super blue moon blood moon. Super moon for short.”
He whistled as though impressed.
Then, with annoyance, “Are you getting drunk?”
“Maybe. What of it?”
She thumped her coffee mug down on the end table and placed her hands on the arms of the chair as though to pull herself up.
Instantly, he said, “Stay where you are. We’ve got to talk this out.”
“Not if you’re going to be obnoxious.”
“I apologize.”
She settled back into her chair. He walked over to the dining table and set down his glass of whiskey, which was still half full. Then he covered his face with both hands and whispered into his palms. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Why are you so upset, John?”
“Because I don’t want to hear this. Not any of it.” He took a moment to get a grip, then lowered his hands, turned back to her, and, in spite of his denial, asked, “Why was the one in July of that year special?”
Observing him closely, she spoke softly, almost warily. “The total eclipse lasted for one hundred and three minutes. It will be the longest lasting blood moon of the twenty-first century.”
“How do you know all that?”
“The internet. Anybody could know it. When you researched blood moons, you had to have seen how much information is available.”
“Then our unidentified suspect doesn’t have to be an astronomer, an astronaut, a physicist. Just some whack job who went out to howl at the super blue whatever moon on January thirty-first of 2018, grabbed a girl, and liked it, and celebrated the next blood moon in the same way. Poor sucker had to wait till ’22 for his next fix.”
“You’re being obnoxious.”
“I’m not running for Mister Congeniality.” He plopped into the chair, laid his head back, and closed his eyes.
Beth broke a drawn-out silence. “Do you think the theory of serial abductions is so far-fetched? Do you think I’m fanciful? Crazy?”
“No.”
“Then—”
He opened his eyes and held up his hand, stopping her. “My aversion to this topic has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. I won’t go through it again. As compelling as your observations are—and they are , Beth. Everything you’ve told me rouses my interest, but I don’t want to hear any more. I can’t help you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Won’t.”
“Because of the Mellin case?”
“Which had the effect of an H-bomb on my life.”
“Your marriage?”
“No, the marriage had already been leveled, but my obsession over the balled-up investigation, my drunken nights after, gave Roslyn the excuse she needed to blame the failed marriage on me, instead of on the affair she’d been having.”
“For how long?”
“A year or more.”
“You knew about it?”
“Knew and didn’t care.” He met her gaze head-on. “I wasn’t living like a saint, either.”
“I see.” She looked down and picked up a strand of fringe again. “Why did you stay married?”
“That’s not open to discussion.”
“All right.” She wetted her lips, then said, “What specifically happened between you and Tom Barker?”
He was about to hedge on that, too, when she said, “I deserve to know why my life was endangered tonight. Unless you were exaggerating about that.”
“I wasn’t.” He sat up, rolled his shoulders, shifted positions in the chair. “When I cut Billy Oliver down from the ceiling in his jail cell, he had a suicide note tucked inside his shirt. Barker’s take on that? ‘Crissy is dead and gone, but at least the perp saves us the trouble of executing him. That’s cause for celebration.’ That kid’s body was still warm.”
“That’s obscene.”
“I thought so.”
“You didn’t think Billy Oliver was the culprit, did you?”
“No.”
“And you still don’t.”
“No.” He came out of his chair again and ran his hand around the back of his neck. “But, as I said, I’ve been wrong before.”
Beth got up and followed him over to the dining table, where he retrieved his glass of whiskey and shot the remainder of it. “I don’t think you’re wrong, John. I think there’s a real possibility that the individual who took Crissy, and the two girls in 2018, is still out there, waiting for Thursday night, and that some woman is going to suffer terribly if he’s not stopped.”
“Then stop him. Good luck.”
He reached for the bottle of bourbon, but Beth knocked it out of his hand. In spite of being stunned, he made a quick save. Otherwise, the bottle would have crashed to the floor. He set it down hard on the table. “What the hell was that for?”
She looked equally as irate as he was. “How can you be so nonchalant?”
“Practice,” he retorted. “It’s another of my self-preservation tactics.”
“Self-preservation. Self . That’s the key word here, isn’t it? The Mellin case messed up your life. But are you prepared to stand by and see another woman vanish off the face of the earth?”
“If that happens, it’ll be a shame, but it won’t be my problem.”
Her chest seemed to cave in. She made a sobbing sound. “I don’t think you act mean; I think you genuinely are.”
He held up his index finger. “Don’t shortchange loaning socks and fondness for my dog.”
She gave a bitter laugh. “If your only form of defense is sarcasm, that’s pathetic. I’ll admit that after everything we went through this evening, and here, surrounded by your family memorabilia, I was beginning to think that maybe I’d misjudged you, that maybe you did have a sensitive side. But my first impression was spot on. Your arrogant disregard never fails to resurface.
“The bottom line is that you don’t give a damn about anything. I saw it the minute you walked into that scuzzy bar, and again this morning after you dragged me from the airport.
“You ooze indifference. Nothing gets to you. That Mellin case opened you up and scooped you out. You’re empty. Heartless, soulless, and unfeeling. You don’t really feel anything, do you? Do you? ”
Pushed to his limit, he moved in on her until just shy of touching, their faces close. “You think I’m unfeeling? Let me tell you something. I’ve done nothing but feel remorse and regret for over three years. Every morning I wake up with self-loathing for ignoring my instincts, for not telling Barker to go fuck himself and start looking for Crissy hours— hours —before we did.
“I told that conceited asshole that the neighbor kid, Billy, was a conspicuous suspect, a perfect scapegoat, too obvious and easy. I told him we needed to broaden our scope, widen our net, look at other people.
“But Barker wanted to be done with it. He wanted it quickly wrapped up to make himself look good. He assigned the ogre to interrogate Billy. He hammered that poor kid, confusing him, feeding him the answers that Barker wanted to hear. When I called them on it, Barker sneered at me. ‘Don’t tell me how to run my show, Bowie. Be a team player, or you’ll never be a team leader.’
“So I fell into step and followed procedure, grumbling about it, yeah, but also not acting on my gut instinct that we were looking in the wrong place and at the wrong guy. Why did I capitulate, you ask? Why? ” He inched closer to her. “Because I was vying for the same goddamn promotion as Barker.
“And because I wanted it, wanted it bad, wanted the pay increase, bad, I failed both Crissy and Billy Oliver. Trust me, Ms. Collins, I have enough self -disgust to last me for the rest of my life.”
He ended on a near shout that awakened him to how he had borne down on her. His breathing was labored, heavy enough for the hot gusts to stir the pale strands of hair framing her face.
Forcibly, he released the tension in his muscles. He angled himself back. Her eyes, wide with shock, were the color of the bourbon he’d been drinking and just as intoxicating. He fixed on them and focused on bringing himself under control.
He didn’t quite succeed, though. Strictly by willing it, he couldn’t regain control over everything. He couldn’t rule the fever infusing his blood, or where it was funneling, or the volume of it that filled him, swelled him, made him hard. He had no dominion over a desperate craving to draw her against his straining body and take her mouth with his.
Christ.
Speaking in a low rumble, he said, “Move away from me, Beth. Now. And don’t ever accuse me again of being unfeeling. I’ll show you different.”