Nick if that’s too much of a mouthful.”
“I’ll take that under advisement, Special Agent,” Charley promised.
Nick leaned over to get a better view of the other room and her. He couldn’t make out if she was smiling, but he thought he detected as much in her voice.
One step at a time, Nicky, one step at a time, he counseled silently.
The bottom drawer had negligees and the scent of expensive perfume. He paused a moment to inhale and appreciate, then another moment to mourn the waste of a human being before he gingerly rifled through the soft, filmy garments. And found a prize. A small four-by-six beige leather-bound book.
He took it out and thumbed through it. Delicate handwriting marked every page.
“Found a diary,” he announced, holding it aloft.
“I’ll see your diary and raise you an address book.” Crossing back to him, she displayed the volume she’d unearthed in the desk. “Maybe by reading that and calling some of the people in here, we can reconstruct her week.”
“Week? Don’t you mean day?”
Charley shook her head. “I always say what I mean,” she informed him crisply.
He was feeling her out, she thought. Circling her and looking for a weakness like a new buck entering an established herd. She was accustomed to doing things her own way. Ben had been a mentor and a guide, but he’d always given her her own lead. Early on, he had told her to trust her instincts and then he’d proved it by showing her that he trusted them. She had a strong hunch that Brannigan just wanted to be leader of the pack.
Not gonna work that way, Special Agent.
“This bastard stalks them. One of the victims’ brothers came forward and told us that his sister had confided to him that she thought she was losing her mind because she felt someone was watching her all the time. I don’t doubt that she was right. The Sunday Killer follows them around, gets their routines down, then waits for just the right moment to take them out.”
“As long as it’s on a Sunday.”
“As long as it’s on a Sunday,” she echoed.
“But why?”
There was frustration in Charley’s voice as she said, “That is the million-dollar question, Special Agent Brannigan. We get the answer to that, maybe we can get the son of a bitch.”
A noise in the other room told her that the rookie had returned. She crossed back to the living room. Brannigan was right behind her.
Jack looked eager to share what he’d managed to discover. “One of the neighbors on the floor said she thought she heard yelling coming from this apartment around noon yesterday.”
“What kind of yelling?” Nick asked. “Screams for help? An argument?”
Jack shook his head. “She just said yelling. But she said it was a man. And she thought it was the TV. You know, one of those daytime cable channel crime series that’s always being rerun. The woman said she was just about to go knock on Stacy Pembroke’s door when the yelling stopped.”
Nick exchanged looks with Charley. “Bad luck for Stacy,” he commented.
“Yeah,” Charley agreed sadly—if something as heinous as what had transpired in this apartment could be described with such sanitary words.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHARLEY PUSHED the key into the lock. Turning it took effort. She felt bushed, really bushed. Worn-out from the inside clear to the outside.
This was probably the way someone with their foot caught in a stirrup felt after they’d been dragged for three miles by a wild horse. Going around in wide, fruitless, unproductive circles always did that to her.
With a sigh almost as big as she was, Charley pushed down on the door handle and walked into her apartment. She was instantly greeted by Dakota, who moments earlier, if the warm spot that met her feet when she kicked off her shoes was any indication, had been lying on the floor directly in front of the door.
Tail wagging like a metronome on caffeine, the German shepherd ran back and forth as if she couldn’t make up her mind what to do or where to go first.
Charley laughed softly. “You and me both, Dakota.”
The dog returned to angle her head beneath her mistress’s hand. It was almost as if the animal was petting her instead of the other way around. Charley smiled to herself. Dakota had her trained well.
She could barely place one foot in front of the other and make her way to the living room where the sofa beckoned to her. Sinking into the cushion was like sinking into an old friend. The slightly worn gray upholstery embraced her.
A beat later, Dakota joined her.
Charley closed her eyes, petting the animal again. She’d long since given up trying to keep the dog off the furniture. The sofa was her favorite spot. But Dakota listened to her most of the time, which was more than she could say for the rest of the world.
After a moment, Charley forced herself to open her eyes again. It was either that or fall asleep sitting up. Turning in Dakota’s direction, she noticed that the telephone on the table beside the sofa was rhythmically blinking at her like a red-eyed, menstruating Cyclops.
Three quick blinks, then a long one. That meant three calls.
Charley frowned.
She didn’t have to listen to the messages. Experience told her who had called. He must have heard it on the news, she thought grimly. She had to psych herself up before she tackled returning the calls.
Better yet, she needed to hear a friendly voice first. Charley picked up the cordless receiver and pressed a single button on the keypad, the one connecting her to the only person she could turn to at a moment like this.
It took several rings before she heard the phone being picked up. The moment she heard the deep, rumbly voice honed by years of devoted Scotch-and-soda imbibing, she smiled.
“Hello?”
Charley didn’t bother with a greeting. She didn’t need to. Slipping into a conversation with Ben Temple was as easy as breathing.
“They gave me a new partner today.” She couldn’t help making it sound like an accusation.
She heard the voice on the other end chuckle. “About time.”
She could envision Ben leaning back in that chair he always favored, the one his late wife had begged him to get rid of. Worn, shapeless and faded in a multitude of places, the once-hunter-green recliner matched nothing in the house except for Ben. “I kept hoping you’d change your mind and come back.”
The shoulder that had caught the bullet still hurt when he moved it a certain way. It probably always would. At sixty-three, he didn’t heal the way he had at twenty.
“If I do, it’s going to be to sit behind a desk and puzzle things out, Charley. Don’t
