Freefall (5 page)

Just in case.

The strange scratching sound ceased, and all she could hear was the familiar island music of the sea and the buzz of summer cicadas outside the open window.

It was only your imagination
, she assured herself.
Only Swannsea settling for the night. The way all old houses do
.

She took several slow, deep breaths, as one of the counselors who had rushed to Florence after the bombing had taught her. Coaxed her body to relax.

As a waning sliver of moon continued its journey across a cloud-scudded sky, beneath the benevolent gazes of Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio, Sabrina passed a long, restless night chasing sleep.

"Jesus." Twenty-year-old Randy Beaudine lay sprawled on the backseat of the pimped-out Mazda. "Are we still alive?"

"For now." Madison Fraiser managed to get a hand between their sweat-slick bodies and pressed it against his bare chest. "But I'm at risk of suffocating to death if you don't get up so I can breathe." She pushed harder. "Besides, I'm not about to risk that condom leaking."

"Spoilsport."

It was what she always said. Not that Randy could blame her. To hear her tell it, she'd had her career mapped out by the time she was seven years old, back when she'd been designing clothes for her Barbie doll.

By age ten she was sewing for her mother and sisters. By eighteen, she'd saved up enough money to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design by creating knock-offs of pop celebrities' outfits for her high school classmates back home in Chicago.

She was the most driven girl—person—he'd ever met, which occasionally made him feel guilty about his parents' not only footing his tuition bill but also springing for a three-room apartment in Savannah's historic district.

Although there wasn't anywhere else he'd rather be at the moment, Randy sat up, grabbed a paper napkin from the take-out bag on the floor and cleaned up.

"Besides, unless I lost my memory when you blew the top of my head off, sugar," he said, "it seems you're the one who talked me into stopping for a quickie."

They'd made the trip out to Swann Island today so he could finish up a portfolio for his Villa and Garden class. The professor had already covered the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Alhambra, Versailles, Monticello, and Fallingwater as examples of locations where art and nature coexisted in ideal harmony.

But Randy considered Swannsea Plantation, with its green fields of tea plants, peach orchards, acres of holly trees, kitchen gardens, and gleaming white antebellum house dating back to when cotton was king, to be right up there with those more-famous sites.

"Like getting you to stop took any convincing." Her voice was muffled by the sundress she was pulling back over her head. "And I'm not even going to let myself wonder how you knew about this place."

"I used to gig frogs in this pond when I was a kid." It wasn't actually a pond—more a wide spot in the marsh.

"Ooh, ick." She was searching on the floor for her sandals. "Is that what it sounds like?"

The sandals were white, with pink flowers that she'd hot-glued to the leather. He found one under his jeans, which were still in a heap on the floor.

"Pretty much. Some folks like to use a gun, but—"

"A gun? For frogs?" She took the sandal he held out toward her and slipped it onto a tanned bare foot tipped in nails the color of a ripe peach. "Wouldn't that pretty much blow them away?"

"Not if you use a .22 loaded with snakeshot."

"You country boys have the strangest ways of amusing yourselves."

He wisely didn't point out that some of the kinky things she'd thought up to do in bed sure as hell topped any amusements he'd ever known.

"When you're a kid, nothin' beats staying up past midnight to slither around in muddy water, playing with a flashlight and hunting bullfrogs."

"It sounds delightful." Her dry tone said otherwise.

"It may be a guy thing. But it was a helluva lot of fun. And unlike for a lot of sports, you don't need to go out and buy a bunch of equipment. All you need is a gig, an old broom handle, a flashlight, and a sack to put the frogs in."

"Eeeww." She shuddered dramatically. Randy often thought that if she weren't dead-set on a career designing clothes for the rich and famous, she could make a good actress. "Disgusting."

"Hey, aren't you always going on and on about all those French designers you get off on—Christian Lacroix, Valentino, and who's the other one, John Paul Jones, or something like that?"

"Jean Paul Gaultier." She corrected him on a lift of her cute pointed chin.

Which he knew, since she was always quoting the guy like he was the Bible or something. Randy liked teasing her because, although he had enough sense never to tell her, she was as cute as a speckled bluetick pup when she got on her high Yankee high horse.

"And for your information," she said, "Valentino's not French. He's Italian."

"Still, I'll bet old Jean Paul has eaten himself a few frog legs in his day."

"You may be right." She tossed her blond hair. "But I'll bet he didn't gig them himself."

"Probably had servants to do it for him," Randy replied.

"You're impossible." She blew out a long breath. "I've got to pee."

That was no big surprise. She always peed right after sex.

"Let's go."

He grabbed the flashlight from inside the center console.

"You're not coming with me!" She sounded more shocked by that idea than she'd been by the idea of him gigging amphibians.

"You wander off the road on your own, darlin', and you could end up in the swamp. Which, unless you've always wanted to experience an up-close-and-personal meeting with a gator, isn't something I'd recommend."

"An alligator?"

"You're in the Lowcountry, sugar." He stroked her dark hair, "Where do you think those fancy shoes and purses you like so much come from?"

"I suppose it's a lot like what they say about making sausage. It's best not to think what goes into it."

But she was thinking about it. He could tell by another shudder that perversely made him want to take a nip of her smooth bare shoulder.

"You don't have to worry, cupcake." He nuzzled her neck, drinking in the scent of gardenias. "You'll be safe with me."

"That's what you said that first night you showed up at my apartment with a pizza. If I remember correctly, it took you exactly ten minutes to get my panties off."

And hadn't she been more than willing to help? Hell, the way she'd attacked the zipper on his jeans, he'd worried she might cost him the opportunity of fathering the next generation of Beaudines.

"I can't control myself around you, darlin'," he drawled. "You set my poor male head to spinning."

She folded her arms. "I suppose you think that good old Southern boy so-called charm works on me?"

"I was hoping it would."

She laughed in feminine resignation. Randy had always liked girls, and fortunately for him, they'd always liked him right back.

"Well, you're right. It does."

He might not be as wise as he would have liked when it came to the mysterious ways of women, but he was smart enough not to gloat. Instead, he leaned over and opened the door.

She frowned as he climbed out of the car behind her.

"There's no way I'm going to let you stand here and watch me pee," she complained. "I need my privacy."

Personally, he thought it was a little late for modesty, after she'd had his cock in her luscious mouth and he'd been deep inside her, but he didn't want to ruin the lingering sexual afterglow with an argument.

"Okay. Why don't you stay right here by the car, then." There was enough moonlight he figured she'd manage not to fall into the pond without the flashlight. "I'll walk a bit down the road and give you that privacy."

"You're going to leave me alone? On a deserted road? In the dark?"

Jesus. Stay. Go. He couldn't win. "I'll only be a few feet away."

"Don't listen."

Resisting a mighty urge to roll his eyes, Randy lifted his right hand. "I promise." He began walking away. "You give a holler when you're ready for me to come on back."

It felt good stretching his legs after having had them folded into pretzels. He figured some people might consider making love in the backseat of a car on a deserted Southern lane romantic. When you were six-foot-four, it proved more than a little cramped.

Not that he'd been complaining. Although they'd been together for nearly a year, they still couldn't keep their hands off each other. Which suited Randy just fine.

It was also surprising, since usually by now things would've cooled off. At least on his part. Hell, what women insisted on calling their "relationship" had never lasted more than a couple months before. Which had him wondering, on occasion, if maybe he and the sexy little dress designer had stumbled into something that might prove permanent.

However, his mama hadn't raised a dummy, and since Madison had told him right off the bat, that first night when they'd shared a pepperoni pizza and a marathon of hot sex, that she wasn't looking for happily-ever-afters, he'd wisely kept those thoughts to himself.

Still, they were about to graduate. Go off into the big wide world. And selfish as he knew it would be, he would like to get some sort of commitment before she took off to New York City, or Paris, or London, or wherever the hell her yellow brick road to fame and fortune took her.

He hoped she would let him tag alone. Nice thing about coming from money was he didn't need to work for wages. Which allowed him to indulge his interests. Which, for the past four years, had been architectural history. Fortunately, all those famous fashion centers she'd starred on that world map tacked up over her desk had lots of both architecture
and
history.

The twisting narrow road followed a bend in the pond. Moonlight shimmered on the tobacco-dark water, turning it a burnished copper. The air, thick with the scent of salt, rotting wood, and decaying spartina grass, dripped with moisture. Across the pond, a stand of tupelo, draped with ghostly moss, created an impenetrable black wall.

A chorus of deep
jug-uh-room, jug-uh-room
bellowed from somewhere in the dark. A lone barred owl hooted questions.

As he scanned the weed mats, lily pads, and fallen trees with the flashlight, looking for the shimmering yellow eyes of a bullfrog, Randy could understand how a Northern city girl might not be able to appreciate being twelve years old and getting to go out on the jonboat with his dad.

But given time, Randy figured, she might come to appreciate the almost primeval beauty of the Lowcountry. Maybe even learn to love it as much as he always had.

He was indulging in a fantasy of someday bringing his own son out here in the swamp to initiate him into the rites of Southern manhood when a bloodcurdling shriek shattered the night.

Nate Spencer had come face-to-face with death before. During his years in the Marines, the enemy had done their best to kill him, just as he'd killed some of them. He would have preferred not to take those lives, but that's the way it was in war, and until all the world leaders stood hand in hand on some mountaintop and sang "Kumbaya" and the Coca-Cola song, Nate figured things wouldn't be changing anytime soon.

But, damn, the civilian world was supposed to be different. Especially this little hidden corner of it. The last murder on Swann Island had been sixteen years ago, back when he was still in high school, and even that hadn't been premeditated.

As well as he could remember, Kenny Bonner and Pete Sullivan had gotten liquored up down at The Stewed Clam and gotten into an argument over which was the best Vietnam war movie ever made.

When Kenny had insisted it was, hands down,
Apocalypse Now
, Pete had reluctantly allowed that it could have been a fair enough movie if Coppola hadn't cast Martin Sheen in the part of Willard. Like anyone could buy a pansy Hollywood liberal as a Special Forces officer?

Hell, no. According to witnesses who'd been in the waterfront bar at the time, he'd banged his bottle of Bud on the bar to emphasize his point.

The best flick, hands fuckin' down, was
The Deer Hunter
. Because it depicted real life. And De Niro was more of a real man than Sheen could be in his faggiest wet dreams.

As if to make his point, Pete had pulled out a Colt revolver and dared Kenny to prove he wasn't as limp-wristed as his movie star hero by reenacting
The Deer Hunter's
Russian roulette scene.

Kenny, who may have been drunk, but not as stupid as Pete, declined to play.

Which was when Pete spun the cylinder, dumped out the bullets, and before the bartender could grab the gun from his hand, placed the barrel against his best friend's temple and pulled the trigger.

At his sentencing, Peter Stonewall Sullivan was still insisting he'd honestly believed the gun wasn't loaded.

Nate's dad, who'd been sheriff at the time, had believed him.

Unfortunately, both men had been too drunk to notice that only five bullets had landed on the scarred wooden bar. A sixth, which had lodged in the cylinder, blew that hole through Kenny's alcohol-sodden brain.

Pete pleaded guilty, served three years of a five-year term, and although dried out the former alcoholic, left prison a shattered man. Not wanting to see him end up on the street, Nate Senior had given him a job doing janitorial work around the station. A job Nate had continued to fund when he'd been sworn into office.

That death had been reckless, stupid, and avoidable.

This death was flat-out ugly. On all counts.

"Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God." The young girl was sitting in the front seat of his cruiser, slender white arms wrapped around her body, as if trying to hold herself together.

The girl's companion, who looked pale as paper himself and smelled of vomit, sweat, and, Nate couldn't help noticing, sex, was leaning against the fender of the black-and-white, trying to focus on the questions.

"I told you," he repeated, "I don't know what time we got out here." He raked a wildly trembling hand through his shoulder-length hair. "We'd been out to the plantation. I wanted to take some shots for my senior portfolio."

"You're a student?"

"We both are. At SCAD."

Which explained the blue streaks in his long hair, Nate decided.

"And you'd come down this road to give your girlfriend privacy to go to the bathroom," he repeated what she'd managed to get out.

"Uh, yeah." He shot a look toward the car, as if wondering how much she'd told Nate.

"Look." Nate rocked back on the heels of his eelskin Tony Lamas. "You're both over eighteen. What you do on your own time is your business, and I don't care what you were up to, so long as you weren't breaking the law in my jurisdiction."

"No, sir!" The kid's Adam's apple bobbed furiously. He lowered his voice to a just-between-us-guys volume. "We'd been fooling around for a while."

"And how long would you estimate that
while
was?"

"I don't know." Another shaky swipe of his hand. "I guess half an hour. Maybe forty-five minutes."

"And you didn't see anyone else on the road?"

"No, sir."

"And you didn't touch the body?"

"No, sir!" He shot an involuntary look back at the marsh, then looked like he was about to hurl again.

"Look at me," Nate said quietly. Firmly.

The dead woman's long black hair had been caught up in the roots of a swamp tupelo. Her mouth was open, as if death had caught her in midscream.

One eye was staring sightlessly upward. The other was gone, eaten away, Nate figured from the raggedy skin around it, by crabs or fish.

Her throat appeared to be slit from ear to ear.

It was the second death on the island in the past two weeks. Last week they'd found an unidentified male floating in the water. His throat, too, had been cut.

They wouldn't know for sure until they got her onto an autopsy table, but what were the chances of the same type of fatal injuries being inflicted by two separate murderers?

Although he wasn't a coroner, Nate knew that the strong ammonia odor rising from the body suggested saponification had already begun. Which meant she'd been in the marsh long enough for bacteria to invade her body.

It also gave Nate the uneasy feeling that he knew exactly who this victim was. Hallie Conroy's husband had reported her missing four weeks ago. Reports from neighbors about frequent loud fights and the fact that Jake Conroy had been rolling around in the sheets at some motel in Somersett when his wife had supposedly gone missing had landed the husband at the top of Nate's suspect list.

Not that he hadn't continued to work the case. The last anyone had seen of the unfortunate Mrs. Conroy was when she'd thrown that tantrum—and a lamp—at the motel before storming off.

They'd found her car, abandoned with two flat tires, not far from the ferry landing the next morning.

The problem was, although Nate didn't have a shred of proof, his spidey sense was telling him that he was meant to find both bodies.

Otherwise, how much trouble would it have been to weigh them down? Or bury them somewhere on the island?

The question was whether the killer was challenging the police, maybe even asking for help—one of those "Here I am, catch me before I kill again" pleas. Or maybe he arrogantly thought he was too smart to be caught by some hick black cop.

Hell, perhaps there wasn't any message involved at all. Maybe the guy just thought so little of his victims he had no problem with tossing them away like used condoms.

A pair of headlights were cutting through the fog, coming this way. Nate guessed it was the medical examiner. Dr. Harlan Honeycutt III, the general practitioner who had delivered most of the citizens of Swann Island for the past forty years, Nate included, hadn't been happy at being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night.

Well, didn't that make two of them?

As it was, Nate was definitely going to have to be on the doorstep when Floral Fantasies opened in a few hours, so he could spring for a big-ass bouquet of pricey red roses, then try to crawl his way back into the good graces of the sexually unsatisfied female he'd left behind in those cooling sheets.

Damn. Another fucking murder. And wasn't that what he needed?

"Okay." Nate pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose, then directed his attention back to the kid. "Let's start again at the beginning."