“Don’t be ridiculous. This is the age of media-soldiers dead on the battlefield, et cetera. I’m fine.”
He studied her, then nodded and hit the key to open his photos. Despite her words of assurance, Katie wasn’t really ready for what she saw.
The scene. The scene of Tanzler and Elena she knew so well from being a kid growing up in Key West was familiar and yet horrible.
But there was Tanzler.
And there was a woman in Elena’s place on her bed who had lived and breathed at a different time. Elena had died of tuberculosis, the woman had been murdered.
And though Katie had never known her, she knew her.
She had seen her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She had seen the huge tear form in her eye, and trail down her cheek.
Stella Martin had not been a great beauty. In death, she was like a caricature of Elena.
“Just like Tanya, and yet…” David murmured.
“What do you mean? It’s a copycat killing?”
He shook his head. “I think the same person killed Tanya and this woman,” he said. “She is not laid out as carefully as Tanya had been. There’s something rushed about the display. And Stella was older and not as beautiful as Tanya. There’s something almost garish about Stella. I think she was a handy victim. I think the killer wanted her displayed because I’m here, because Sam is here. Why else would the killer wait all of this time to kill again? Nothing else makes sense.”
“What else makes you think it’s not a copycat?” Katie asked.
David enlarged the picture, showing her the face. “Petechia,” he said. “It’s a hemorrhage in the eyes…caused by strangling. Look, you can see the bruises on the neck. But there’s more-more like the crime-scene photos in Tanya’s file. See the slight bruises…not even bruises, really. But the blue-and-gray smudges on the nose…and there, on the chin.”
Katie narrowed her eyes. She saw the little marks.
“What do you think they are?” she asked him.
“I think they’re from some form of plastic. I think the killer is putting some kind of plastic bag over their heads. They don’t see him until the last minute. He comes from behind, puts the plastic over their heads. While they’re desperately gasping for breath already, he strangles them.”
“So they really don’t know who their killer is,” Katie murmured.
“He steals their breath away so quickly, they can’t even fight,” David said thoughtfully.
Katie looked away. She didn’t want to see her ghost, the woman who had been a stripper and a prostitute but strong and gutsy in her own way, dead in a tableau.
David left the memory stick in the computer and stood, looking at his watch. He frowned. “You don’t work tonight?”
“Not tonight, though Uncle Jamie said something about doing karaoke all week next week for Fantasy Fest,” Katie told him. “I’m looking forward to my days off here.”
He was a few feet away. He nodded, and she was hoping, without being overt, that he meant to keep her with him, spend their time together, from now until then.
But that wasn’t the case.
“I have to go,” he told her.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“The strip club.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
“No, it’s-it’s a strip club.”
She offered him a dry smile. “This is Key West, if you’ve forgotten. Men and women are more than welcome together.”
He shook his head. “Katie, trust me. This is something I really need to do alone.”
“David-Stella was discovered today. People in there…”
“They might be cruel to me? Treat me like a murderer?” he asked. He shook his head. “That’s why I made a point of staying on the street today. I’m old hat, and sadly, she was a prostitute, and half the people out there assume that it’s some kind of a copycat deal.”
He walked over to her, caught her shoulders and looked into her eyes. She stared back at him, her heart beating hard, and she wondered how she could possibly feel so strongly about him when just days ago she had barely known him.
“Katie, I need to speak with Morgana. You’re the one who told me about her, remember?”
She nodded. Great, she had told him about a stripper.
“Wait for me, please?” he asked huskily.
“Sure,” she told him.
He kissed her. On the mouth. But it was a quick kiss. A goodbye-for-now kiss.
But his hands lingered on her shoulders. “Katie, I…”
“Yes?”
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for believing me.”
“You can’t really thank me for that,” she told him. “It’s the way I feel, it’s…intuition. Whatever, it’s not something we really choose. We believe or we don’t.”
He smiled. The man had fabulous eyes. She felt tension ripping through her, and she wanted to hold on to him, beg him to stay with her.
He touched her cheek. “Still, thank you,” he said.
She didn’t grab him; she didn’t hold him, speak to him or try to stop him.
She nodded, and his lips brushed hers once again.