Before I Sleep Read online

“The police aren't paying attention.”

  Get his number, Carey mouthed to the producer, who shrugged that she didn't understand.

  “Tell me about it, Bob,” she said into the microphone. As soon as the guy started talking, she reached for the pad and pen Ted had beside him. Quickly she scrawled, “Tell Lucy to get his number!” and passed it back to Ted. He nodded and pressed the button that would allow him to talk privately to Lucy.

  “I thought the pink nightgown would let them know,” Bob was saying. “They're stupid! They're all stupid!”

  “Well …” Carey wasn't quite sure how to handle this. She wanted more information, but she didn't want him to hang up before they had his number. She had no idea how the computerized tracking system worked, and whether any time was needed.

  “It was so obvious a fool could have seen it,” Bob said, his voice rising. “But I guess they're even stupider than that So it's their fault, Carey! It's their fault!”

  “What's their fault?” She looked toward Lucy and saw the woman making an “OK” sign and waving a piece of paper.

  “It's their fault I had to kill somebody!”

  “Wait!” Carey felt as if her heart had stopped dead. Everything else seemed to fade away except the microphone in front of her. “You don't have to kill anybody, Bob. Just talk to me. Make me understand so I can make them understand.”

  “They won't understand. It was the nightgown! It was the same damn nightgown the other woman was wearing.”

  “How do you know that, Bob?”

  “Tell ‘em to check it out. But it's too late anyway. John didn't do it. I did.”

  There was a click followed by a dial tone, suddenly the scariest sound in the world to Carey. She couldn't think of anything to say. She looked at Ted and saw he was equally at a loss. Lucy, however, was quicker than either of them. She cut them away to a commercial, covering the dead air.

  “Jesus Christ,” Ted said when he realized nobody would hear him except Carey. “Jesus H. Christ.”

  Carey's brain ground back into action. “When you go back on the air, don't say anything about it, Ted. There's no way you can discuss that call without taking the chance you'll piss this guy off enough to make him actually do something.”

  He nodded. “You're right. What are you going to do?”

  “Call a friend at the police department.”

  He looked grim. “Sounds like a plan. Christ I can't believe this! I've had people threaten to kill me, but I've never had anyone threaten to kill somebody else. It gives me the willies!”

  Carey knew exactly what he meant. It was worse somehow. Maybe because when the threat was against you, you didn't really believe it. But when it was against some poor, innocent bystander …

  She let the thought trail away, unable to deal with it. Leaving the studio, she went to get the phone number from Lucy and ask her to save the tape in case the police wanted it, then hunted up a phone she could use.

  Seamus wasn't at home, so she called the police station.

  “Detective Rourke is out on a case, ma'am,” said the detective she was finally put through to. “Maybe somebody else can help you.”

  She tried to remember the names of other detectives she'd known in her days as a prosecutor, and found herself drawing a blank. “I'm a radio talk-show host,” she said finally. “I just had someone call me claiming knowledge of the break-in at Tricia Summers's house last week. He also said he killed somebody.”

  “Lots of jerks call and tell us the same thing, ma'am,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “Did he offer anything useful?”

  “I've got his phone number.”

  “Well, give it to me, and I'll have somebody look into it.” When they get around to it, his tone implied.

  Carey was suddenly furious. She wasn't used to being treated this way by cops. Of course, a state attorney had a hell of a lot more clout with the police than a mere radio personality. Her voice took on a jagged edge of ice.

  “Look, Detective, just have Seamus Rourke call me ASAP. My name is Carey Stover, and my number is 5553214. And if he doesn't get this message, I'll call him at home at 5 A.M. Got it?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line, and she could imagine the guy trying to decide whether to give her hell or let it go. Wisely, he decided to let it go. “What's your number again?” was all he asked.

  She repeated it, then hung up the phone.

  Slug! She wondered how much important information vanished in the depths of the ignored heaps on that lamebrain's desk.

  Then she went home, because there wasn't another damn thing she could do.

  People shouldn't live alone, Seamus thought. It made such a mess when they died and weren't discovered right away.

  He stood in a well-appointed living room in a small condo not too far from where Carey lived, although there was no significance in that. The criminal court and the State Attorney's Office were conveniently nearby. The prosecutor who lay dead in his bed had probably chosen this place for its location.

  The smell of death had filled the condo, permeating the paint, the rugs, the upholstery. The violence, however, had been limited to the bedroom. Whoever had slashed the man to death had come upon him in his sleep and taken him by surprise.

  The crime scene technicians, however, were checking this room out as thoroughly as the murder scene. Black fingerprint powder layered every surface. The vacuuming was already done, and the latents were being lifted, item by item.

  Gil came out of the bedroom. “Weekends,” he said.

  “Yup.”

  “They figure out how he got in?”

  “Sliding glass door out back.”

  “Too easy.”

  “I'll never have one.”

  “My ex wanted them.”

  “And?”

  Gil shrugged. “I told her I wasn't going to mop up the blood.”

  Seamus shook his head. “What did she say?”

  “That I had my mind in the gutter, and I ought to get real.”

  “That's pretty real.”

  “That's what I thought. Done?”

  Seamus nodded. “I found some footprints out back near the patio, so they're making casts. Maybe they'll match the ones in the blood on the bedroom rug.”

  Gil shrugged. “It'd be nice if he was wearing size fifteen hand-made Italian loafers.”

  “Be still my beating heart.”

  They walked out together. The night was almost over, and what little they could do at this point was done. Now they had to wait on forensics and the medical examiner.

  At their cars, parked on the street several houses down to make room for the forensics vans and patrol cars, they paused.

  “Ideas?” Gil said finally.

  “You're not gonna like them.”

  “Try me anyway. It's 4 A.M., my head's spinning, and any theory is better than no theory.”

  “Well, it was probably an angry girlfriend or somebody he put away.”

  “That's usually the way the ball bounces.”

  “And the cookie crumbles.”

  Gil rocked back on his heels and looked up at the night sky. “Christ, I hate this job.”

  Seamus knew what he meant. There were times when this job was just too damn much. He knew the guy lying on the bed in there. Or what was left of him.

  “Okay,” said Gil after a moment. “Enough pissing for one night. I heard a ‘but’ in what you just said.”

  “Well …” Carey was getting to him, Seamus thought. She was getting to him, and Gil was probably going to tell him he needed to be committed. “There is the fact that this guy was the lead prosecutor on the John Otis case.”

  Gil looked at him. “You've been listening to the radio too much.”

  “It isn't the radio I've been listening to. This guy was killed the same way as Linda and Harvey Kline, and he was involved with the Otis case.”

  “And unless they're letting death row inmates out on furloughs right before execution, Otis c
ouldn't have had anything to do with this. Are you getting a fever?”

  “I didn't say Otis had anything to do with this.”

  Gil leaned back against his car. “Maybe my ears aren't working.”

  “No, it's just your brain. Nobody's brain works well at this time of night. Forget it. I want to think some more about this. I'll talk to you in the morning.”

  “It is morning,” Gil reminded him. “However, we'll talk about it whenever we drag our asses out of bed and get to work. Say noon?”

  When Seamus climbed into his car, he automatically pulled out his cell phone and called in. “I'm going home,” he told the detective on duty, “and I won't be in until noon. Any messages?”

  “Yeah,” said Sid Markovitz. “Some crazy woman called, said she was a talk-show host with some info, and if you don't call her she'll call you at 5 A.M.“

  “I'll call her.”

  “Let me give you the number.”

  Seamus was about to say he had it, when he realized he didn't. She had moved since their days together, and probably had an unlisted number. He scratched down the digits on the notepad he kept clipped to his dash.

  “Thanks, Sid. And by the way, she's only partly crazy.”

  Then he dialed Carey, taking some nasty pleasure in the fact that he was dragging her out of bed.

  “What's up?” he said, when he heard her groggy voice.

  “Seamus?”

  He remembered her saying his name just that way in the middle of the night, and he remembered what always followed. His entire body sprang to unwelcome life, and that made him mad. “Who else would it be? You called the station?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She was waking up. He could hear it as her tone changed and her voice grew brisker. Already he was missing the sleepy, soft sound. “I had a caller tonight. From what he said, he did the break-in at Tricia Summers's house.”

  “So call the sheriff. It's their case.”

  “But there's more,” she said, her tone becoming impatient. “He said John Otis didn't do it, that he did. And what's more, he said he killed somebody else.”

  The tumblers clicked into place. Seamus heard them, a quiet snick in his brain as it came together.

  “I'm on my way over,” he said. “I'll be there in ten minutes. Put the coffee on. I need it.”

  Put the coffee on.

  Carey stifled the urge to commit mayhem and lay on her bed, staring up at the streaks of light from the streetlamps that had seeped past her curtains to make gashes across the ceiling.

  Put the coffee on.

  Man, she thought, there was nothing like a sense of male privilege. If she'd barged in on him at this hour of the morning, she wouldn't have told him to make her coffee.

  No, that wasn't entirely true. In law school and in the years since, she'd adopted some of that male sense of privilege for herself. It had wound up getting her called pushy and abrasive.

  So he's pushy and abrasive, she decided, and felt a small trickle of satisfaction. What was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander. The knife cuts both ways. A whole bunch of aphorisms ran through her head, signaling that her brain was waking up, whether she wanted to or not.

  She threw back the blankets and sat up. Only then did she realize why she was so irritated with him. Waking up to the sound of his voice had stirred long-buried memories of awaking beside him, hearing his quiet murmurs and feeling the touch of his hands and mouth. Need was running along her nerve endings, a subtle irritation that was making her angry with him.

  Stupid, she told herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  She pulled on a knee-length cotton kimono and headed down to the kitchen, where she started the pot of coffee. It was nearly 4 A.M., SO she figured he'd probably been up all night on an investigation. She tried to resist the urge to take care of him—it certainly wasn't her responsibility any longer—but found herself putting strips of bacon into the electric frying pan, pulling the toaster oven out of the cupboard and a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator.

  Wrong food, she thought as the bacon started sizzling. Protein wakes you up, carbohydrates help you sleep. She probably wouldn't be able to go back to bed now. Oh, well, maybe some protein would help him drive home in one piece.

  The doorbell rang just as she was turning the bacon. She made him wait while she finished, then went to let him in.

  “Smells good in here,” he said as he stepped across the threshold.

  “I'm making breakfast.” And he looked awful, she thought. Dark circles under his eyes emphasized the fatigue that lined his face. The smile he gave her barely lifted the corners of his mouth.

  “Thanks,” he said, then utterly astonished her by bending to brush a gentle kiss on her cheek. “You always look cuddle-able when you first wake up.”

  Before she could think of a response, he was heading for the kitchen like a heat-seeking missile.

  She followed, feeling as if something in the world had shifted, as if there had been some kind of earthquake that had displaced everything just a little, so that it seemed the same but wasn't.

  And she wasn't nearly awake enough to be having heavy thoughts. She was as close to brain-dead as it was possible to be while still moving around.

  He poured the coffee while she checked the bacon and started making rye toast. When the toast came out of the oven, he took over buttering it.

  It was like old times. When they had lived together, they had often worked like this in the kitchen, sharing the tasks comfortably. How she missed that! Her throat tightened, and she blinked rapidly, trying to hold back unwanted tears.

  Her life had gone to hell when she and Seamus had parted ways, and she had never quite managed to put it back together again. There was a gaping hole at the center of her existence which she had been refusing to look at, but suddenly it was as obvious as the Grand Canyon.

  Not now, she told herself. Not now!

  They didn't talk until they were seated at the table with their breakfasts.

  “Okay,” Seamus said, “run the whole story by me.”

  She did just that, reciting the phone conversation as well as she could remember it, and finishing up by giving him the phone number.

  He took it, looked at it, and stuffed it in the breast pocket of his shirt. “Any chance the station has a recording of the call?”

  She nodded. “Lucy's saving it. If you want it, you can get it when Bill comes in at ten. Otherwise, they'll probably record over it later today.”

  “Well, there went my plan to crash.”

  He wasn't just listening to her, she realized suddenly. He was paying close attention. The back of her neck prickled as awareness penetrated the remaining fog in her brain. “You believe me,” she said.

  He looked wearily at her. “I always believe you.”

  “That isn't what I mean.”

  “Come again?”

  “I mean … you think this is significant. You're not brushing it off as a wacko caller.”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “It needs to be checked out. I'm reserving judgment. What time did the call come in?”

  “A little after eleven.”

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, flipped it open and punched in a number. “Dek, it's Rourke. I need you to check a phone number out for me.” He read the number, then waited, drumming his fingers on the table. He looked at Carey. “You sure they'll have the tape?”

  “I asked Lucy to save it.”

  “Don't they save them all?” But as soon as he spoke, he shook his head. “I guess not. It'd be too much.”

  “We'd be overwhelmed. We save stuff only long enough to get a good line off it to use in station advertising. Sometimes we save something that might be of particular interest later, or something that's historical. They've still got all the tapes of the first shows that were broadcast after the start of the Gulf War. But other than that …” It was her turn to shrug.

  “But she will save this one.”

  “Sure. I asked her to. Besides
, she heard the call. She knows it could be significant.’’

  He nodded, then returned his attention to the phone. “Yeah? Okay. Thanks.” He disconnected, turned off the phone, and put it away. “Pay phone over in Tampa,” he told her. “It's useless.”

  “Seamus, what's going on?”

  He looked at her, his gaze opaque. “The guy said he did the Summers break-in.”

  “And you could have just called the sheriff about it. It's their case. That's what you told me to do. Come on, give.”

  He hesitated visibly. “Oh, hell,” he said finally. “Is there any more coffee?”

  Before she could reply, he'd answered the question himself by looking over at the pot. The glass carafe was still half-full. He pushed back from the table and went to refill his mug.

  She sat looking at him, frustrated to feel closed out of the loop. When she had been a prosecutor, she hadn't been closed out of any loop, but now she was nobody, just a big-mouthed member of the media, and he was going to shut her out. Frustration made her fingers curl until her nails bit into her palms.

  “Seamus …”

  He sighed and looked at her. “What the hell,” he said. “You'll hear all about it in the news today.”

  “Damn straight.”

  He gave her a humorless smile. “There's been a murder.”

  “Oh, God.” Her stomach turned over, leaving her feeling sick. “You think this caller is related.”

  “I have to check everything out.”

  “Of course. Was it … was it a slashing?”

  “Maybe. The vic had been dead for a couple of days. You know how it gets … difficult.”

  “Yeah.” She'd had to look at some of those bloated corpses. A shudder ran through her, and her stomach flipped over again.

  “Anyway, it looks like it maybe was.”

  Blood, she thought. Blood everywhere and a messy corpse. There were guesses that could be reliably made even at the scene, even after a couple of days. Her stomach was rolling like a blender now, and she tried not to let her imagination produce gory images, but they kept popping up anyway.

  “I have to wait on the M.E.,” he continued.

  “Of course.” Feeling her gorge rise, she pushed back from the table. She had to get away from the sight and smell of the food remnants on the table. She headed for the living room.