Dream Man (33 page)

He hadn’t seen Mr. Elrod, though the city directory listed one. Was he out of town? It was a concern that had been laughably easy to answer, though the answer had come from an unexpected source. Marilyn Elrod had conveniently left the house not five minutes before her mail was delivered, and Janes had simply used the opportunity to collect the mail and go through it. Some of the usual assortment of junk mail had been addressed to a Mr. James Elrod, confirming his existence. A more interesting envelope bore the imprint of an Orlando law firm. Janes didn’t hesitate to open it, and what he read greatly pleased him. It seemed Mr. and Mrs. Elrod were currently embroiled in divorce proceedings, and Mr. Elrod had recently moved out. What a pity.

He kept the letter, since it had been opened, and shoved the remainder of the mail back into the box. A quick look around the house revealed that there was no dog—if there had been, it would have been barking like mad by then— but there was an alarm system. Not particularly sophisti-cated, he saw, but a problem. Still, every system had a weakness, and he had no doubt that he would be able to find a means of entry. All in good time, though, all in good time. He wouldn’t make the mistake of hurrying as he had the last time.

“We’re being made to look like fools,” Chief Champlin growled. He wasn’t in a good mood. The mayor had raked him over the coals for jumping the gun and driving old women all over the city into hysteria. Not only that, the bad publicity had cost the city money. Orlando relied heavily on the tourist trade, with visitors from all over the world coming to the Mouse House. The rate of occupancy at the local motels and hotels had fallen off since the news had broken.

“I can’t believe this,” Bonness said plaintively. “Everyone is bitching because someone
hasn’t
been murdered!”

“There were just two murders. Granted, the details were eerie in their similarity—”

“The FBI agrees that it’s the same man,” Dane broke in.

“We didn’t go out on a limb in this, Chief. He’s out there. With the Bureau’s help, we think we’ve identified at least seventeen other killings that he’s done.”

“So maybe he left the city when the news broke!” the chief snapped. Dane shook his head. “We think he’s still here.”

“On the basis of what information?”

“Marlie,” he wanted to say, but he didn’t. He contented himself with replying, “He never left an area so soon before. We’re going with his established pattern.”

“The mayor wants to know, and so do I, just what you’re doing with your time. If there is no evidence, just what in hell are you doing?”

Dane’s face had taken on a stony look. Trammell saw the signs of an incipient loss of temper and stepped in. “We’ve received lists of names from the utility companies on new customers for the past year, and we’re working our way down the list, investigating all the men on it. With the profile the FBI gave us, we’ll be able to narrow it down to a few possibilities.”

Chief Champlin was from the old school. He didn’t like Trammell’s slick sophistication, his money, his snappy clothes, or his exotic looks. He did, however, respect the political ties that Trammell had in the city, courtesy of that same money. He growled a reply along the lines of “They’d better come up with something soon, or else,” and left Bonness’s office.

Bonness sighed and pulled out a handkerchief to blot his forehead. “Shit. Anything on those names we’re running?”

“Nothing that sets off any alarms, but we still have a lot of names to go.”

“Okay. Let me know the minute you hear bells.”

“Will do.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dane said between his teeth as they returned to their desks.

“Calm down, partner. He doesn’t know what we know, because we can’t tell him about Marlie. I don’t think he’d understand.”

“Bonness was right.” Cold fury was still in Dane’s voice and eyes. “These bastards won’t be satisfied until another woman is killed.”

Janes made good use of his time at night. He found a secure place to leave his car, he checked out the situation with the neighbor’s dogs. There were two, but one of them tended to bark at everything, and the other, across the street, would join him. The barking usually elicited no more than a few irritable “Shut ups.”

Marilyn Elrod was a party girl. She was out hitting the bars almost every night, which may have been the reason Mr. Elrod was no longer living there. So far, though, she hadn’t brought anyone home with her. Her active night life gave him plenty of opportunity to make sure things were perfect. Her night life also gave him a means of getting into the house. Thick shrubbery grew all along the house, right up to the garage. She had a habit of backing into the garage, so she could just drive right out whenever she left; since she was facing ahead, it was child’s play for him to slip from his hiding place in the shrubbery into the garage, before the automatic door closed. She never looked back. The door leading from the garage into the utility room wasn’t wired into the security system, though the door from outside into the garage was. It was locked, but locks weren’t a problem for him. It was another skill he had taught himself, with the aid of a mail-order locksmithing course that he had taken under an alias, just as a precaution. Another little detail he had foreseen and taken care of. The first time he entered the house he had simply walked around and familiarized himself with it. He kept himself calm, not letting anticipation trick him into acting before he was really ready, as he had the last time.

The second time, he explored more. He opened her closets and went through her clothes, deciding that her taste seemed frozen in the eighties singles-bar style. She spent a fortune on makeup, he noticed, prowling through her bath-room vanity.

He satisfied himself that there were no guns in the house. Guns could be a big problem. Then, humming to himself, he explored the kitchen. She wasn’t much on cooking; the refrigerator held mostly micro-wave stuff. But she had catered to the fashion of having a large rack of butcher’s knives standing on the shiny black countertop, something he had counted on. Since she cooked so little, it wasn’t likely that she would miss a knife. He examined each knife,
tsk
ing at the dulled edges on the stainless steel blades. Most women no longer had any pride in the domestic skills, which he deplored. If she had kept her knives in good condition, he wouldn’t have to take the slight but admitted risk of removing one of them so he could put a proper edge on it.

All in all, he severely disapproved of Marilyn Elrod.

“Come to the house for dinner with Grace and me tonight,” Trammell said on Friday. Dane leaned back in his chair. He was so sick of the damn lists on his desk that he wanted to cram them all into the trash. He never would have believed that so many people had moved into the Orlando area in the past year. What really pissed him off was that they weren’t turning up a damn thing. He was glad the weekend had come, though he and Trammell were on call.

“It’s Friday,” he reminded Trammell.

“So? You have to eat on Fridays the same as any other day, don’t you?”

“Marlie gets pretty tense on Fridays.”

“Then it will do her good to take her mind off things. If she has a vision, she can have it just as well at my house as at hers.”

“Okay, let me call her.”

Marlie advanced the same arguments that he had, and he gave her the same answers Trammell had given him. She really didn’t need much convincing, because she had spent the week dreading the approaching weekend. Dinner with Trammell and Grace would be a welcome distraction. She had spent a few of her lunch hours shopping this past week, and for the first time wore one of her new outfits that evening. Trammell had said to dress casually, and she did, but the slim, white cotton pants and sleeveless white vest were very fetching, if she did say so herself. Dane shared the opinion. When she came out of the bedroom, his gaze settled on her bare shoulders and the deep vee of the neckline. “Are you wearing a bra?” he asked in a strained voice.

She looked down at herself. “Why?”

“I just want to know. Are you?”

“Can you see anything?” she asked, returning to the bedroom to examine herself in the mirror. Dane followed. “Damn it, Marlie, are you wearing a bra or aren’t you?”

“Do I need one?”

“I’ll find out for myself,” he said in frustration, reaching for her. She slipped away, giving him a roguish smile. “Down, boy. You’ll have to wait until later to find out. We’re going to be late if we don’t leave right now.”

“I haven’t seen that outfit before,” he said as he followed her out the door.

“It’s new. I bought it this week.”

He studied her back, trying to decide if he could make out the outline of a bra beneath the white vest that bared a disconcerting amount of her. It wasn’t that it was indecent, just that he wasn’t used to seeing her dress like that. He liked the hell out of it, but he didn’t want anyone else to appreciate the view. Trammell’s house was large and airy, with sleek furnishings in light, soft colors that opened up the rooms even more. His taste, Marlie admitted, was wonderful. There was a sense of space, serenity, and coolness, enhanced by lush indoor plants and overhead fans gently stirring the air. Dinner was relaxed, with a lot of joking and teasing. Marlie asked Trammell when Dane’s house would be fin-ished, and he lied without turning a hair. More delays, he said solemnly. Grace told Marlie all about the wedding plans she was making, and how lucky it was that they had planned on a long engagement because she would need all the time to plan a large, formal wedding. Trammell broke out in a slight sweat as he listened to the discussion, but the look of wild panic was gone; he was adjusting to the idea of marriage in connection with himself. A series of thunderstorms, normal during the hot summer nights, popped up and entertained them with dramatic flashes of lightning and booms of thunder. After dinner, Trammell took several photographs of them all, and that led him into showing the thick albums of shots he had taken over the years. Dane figured prominently in a good many of them, and Marlie studied his face with interest. He looked different, somehow, in the stark black-and-white photos Trammell had taken. Seeing her interest, Trammell settled beside her to tell her all about every shot.

It was earlier than usual when Marilyn Elrod arrived home, but the passing storms had knocked out the electrici-ty at the bar, and the patrons had been politely but firmly invited to leave. She was also tipsier than usual, and when the garage door didn’t lift, she pressed the button on the opener again. Still nothing happened.

“Damn it,” she muttered, pointing the opener directly at the doors and holding her thumb on the button. Nothing. She threw it onto the car seat beside her. “Stupid batteries.”

She tottered in her high heels up the walk to the front door, then stood weaving as she tried to remember the code for the security alarm. She only had a few seconds after unlocking the door, she didn’t remember how long, to punch in the code and prevent the alarm from sounding. She hated that damn alarm, so shrill it hurt her eardrums. The security system had been James’s idea, not hers. Men and their gadgets.

It took her a minute to notice that the little red light above the lock wasn’t shining. Damn, was everything in the house malfunctioning?

Then she laughed softly to herself. Of course! The electric-ity was off here, too. She should have noticed how dark the neighborhood was.

She fumbled the key into the lock and opened it, stum-bling a bit over the threshold as she went inside. Damn, it was dark as a tomb! How was she supposed to see?

Candles, she thought. She had candles. She had bought an assortment of incense candles, thinking of the sexy atmo-sphere they would make when she brought a lover home. There hadn’t been any lovers yet, but she was prepared just in case. James had probably had some flashlights around, but she didn’t know where they were. It was likely he had taken them with him, the bastard. He wouldn’t want his little dolly to be caught in the dark.

But where had she put them? The kitchen? That didn’t seem like the right place to put incense candles. On the other hand, that’s where the matches were, and maybe she had put them there. She slipped out of her heels as she felt her way through the dark house to the kitchen. She found the matches first and struck one, relieved by the small flare of light. Three of them burned down before she located the incense candles.

She lit one immediately, to give herself light. Well, this was a fine end to a boring evening, she thought in disgust.

She might as well go to bed, since she couldn’t even watch television. She carried the sack of candles in one hand and the lighted candle in the other as she went upstairs, only stumbling once. “Oops,” she whispered. “Have to be care-ful. I’m carrying fire.” The thought made her giggle.

In her bedroom, which she had changed completely after James had left—she had burned all the sheets the bastard had slept on—she lit the candles one by one and set them on her dresser, so she could see the effect when they were reflected in the mirror. Yeah, she thought. Pretty damn sexy. The thick aroma of incense rose, and she coughed a little. Maybe she should go for unscented candles. She began to undress, leaving her clothes were they fell. The incense grew stronger, and she coughed again.

She halted, her head tilted a little to the side. Had she heard something? She waited, but the house remained silent. Too silent, she thought. Yeah, that was the problem. She was accustomed to hearing the quiet hum of the refrigerator, the clocks, the ceiling fans. Without them, she was too aware of the sounds outside.

When she was naked, she pulled on a robe and belted it loosely at her waist. She was suddenly too sleepy to do the complete cleansing cream routine, so she simply wet a washcloth in the dark bathroom and scrubbed it over her face, then dropped it in the basin.

She yawned as she went back into the bedroom. The candle flames flickered, sending up sickening waves of incense. She leaned over to blow them out, and a face appeared in the mirror. She whirled around, a scream lodging in her throat.

“Hellooo,” the man said softly.