But James’s story was the polar opposite, and the idea that James would purposely tamper with evidence was as illogical as it was unbelievable. Any other cop? Maybe. Who was Thomas to say? But James?
“This makes no sense,” Thomas muttered.
He glanced up at the house that belonged to his partner. It was small, colonial, brick—the same as three quarters of the houses in this and many other Ohio neighborhoods. James was a regular guy who led a regular life. It’s all he’d ever aspired to and all he’d ever wanted. Some people dreamt of fame and glory—James Merdino’s dreams revolved around normalcy and permanence.
Growing up, James’s life had been anything but regular. He didn’t talk about his childhood much, but Thomas knew from bits and pieces of conversations they’d had over the years that James’s father had been an officer in the Marines—and a mean alcoholic to boot. William Merdino had moved his family around a great deal, base to base, city to city. James had never known stability, had never been given the chance to form close relationships with friends. Making friends made no sense when he knew he’d be torn away from them a few months later.
Where many kids of military men in similar situations find a saving grace in their mothers, James did not. Lavina Merdino had started out in life wanting to be a good wife and mother, but somewhere along the line, most likely due to her husband’s drinking and philandering ways, her spirit had been broken and she had gone off the deep end. Before she finally committed suicide on James’s tenth birthday, she had been institutionalized five times.
Thomas sighed as he alighted from the Cadillac. His eyes flicked over the small, modest brick house—a house his partner could have afforded to abandon in favor of a better neighborhood years ago, but one James had held onto for what Thomas suspected to be sentimental reasons—it had been his first real home. His first sense of security and permanency.
The lights were off inside, which Thomas found a bit odd. James rarely, if ever, went out, and he hadn’t known his partner to ever crash for the night before three in the morning. He was a workaholic—and one who got his best work done late at night.
Thomas rapped on the wood door, expecting the lights to come on at any moment. He frowned when they failed to. “James!” he called out as he knocked again.
Nothing.
He rapped two more times, but still, nothing.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Turning on his heel, Thomas made his way back to the Cadillac. As he strode toward the car, he couldn’t shake a bizarre feeling that plagued him: a feeling that told him he was being watched. He frowned.
He’d let it go for the night, he decided. But tomorrow he would find his partner and get this situation straightened out.
Nikki trudged into her apartment, her body feeling as
heavy as lead but her mind sharp and alert. She supposed, given the circumstances, it was to be expected. It was something of a consolation to know that two police officers were always a scream away and could easily bust down her front door, but that knowledge didn’t do much to lessen her anxiety.
The things Kim had said to her were true. Her frightened mind really had bestowed superhuman, godlike qualities upon Richard. A fact her would-be murderer would probably enjoy knowing. A fact that mightily irritated her.
Because Kim was right about something else, too. Namely, that no matter how terrified of Richard Nikki might be, he was, in fact, only a man. He couldn’t walk through walls or elude two police officers camped out next door like a supernatural villain in a movie. He was just a man . . .
just a damn man
.
She would do well to remember that fact. She would give anything to make her heart rate and overactive imagination understand that fact.
If her maddeningly quick pulse or the perspiration glistening on her forehead were any indication, however, those facts weren’t likely to be understood by her various organs until the man was caught—dead or alive.
Swallowing past the lump of anxiety in her throat that felt the size of a watermelon, Nikki quickly flicked on all the lights in the apartment, then proceeded to check out the kitchen. She breathed a bit easier when all the knives—potential weapons—were as they should be, nothing looking undisturbed. Three big butcher knives and ten small carving knives. A gift from Kim three Christmases ago.
She picked up a butcher knife, wielding it like a weapon, then commenced a thorough inspection of all closets and potential hiding places in the apartment. When she was finished, she worried that Richard might have run from one hiding spot to another while she had been busy checking them, so she checked them a second time.
Nothing. Everything was as it should be.
Clutching the butcher knife so tightly her knuckles turned white, Nikki backed herself up against the nearest wall. She hadn’t cried, not even once, since this entire ordeal began, but she could feel the emotion getting the best of her and knew she wouldn’t be able to stop it this time.
“I can’t live like this,” she whispered, her voice catching in the back of her throat. “Oh God,
I can’t live like this
.”
Her back slid down the wall. She tightly wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth. When the tears finally came, it would be another hour before they stopped. Another hour before she had the strength to pick herself up off of the floor and fall, exhausted, into bed.
She slept with the lights on.
Chapter 14
Sunday, July 20 2:07 P·M·
“He took time off?” Thomas frowned as he listened to
the police chief’s explanation as to James’s whereabouts. After calling his partner’s house a dozen times, and his cell at least a dozen more, he’d had no choice but to go to the boss. “That’s weird. He never said anything to me about going to see his old man.”
“The bastard got drunk and fell down some steps, split his head open. He was rushed into the E.R., can’t recall which one. Oh wait, I scribbled it down—New York Methodist Hospital. In Brooklyn, I think.”
“Yeah, that’s Brooklyn. Huh.”
“He was rushed for time, Cavanah. I’m sure he’ll phone you when things settle down a bit and his old man gets released.”
Well, at least that explained why James hadn’t answered his cell phone. Cells are forbidden in E.R. waiting rooms. Sensible or not, however, everything seemed to be playing out a bit too conveniently. The missing report. Conflicting stories. And now James’s dad had taken a spill down the stairs.
The last one would have plausibly explained his partner’s untimely absence were it not for the fact that William Merdino had taken a dozen or so tumbles down the stairs in the years Thomas had known James—this was the first time James had felt obliged to go be with his old man following a drunken episode.
“Thanks, Chief,” Thomas muttered into the phone. “I’ll keep trying his cell.”
Nikki woke up the next morning feeling sick as a dog.
She supposed she had the crash coming to her, given that she’d existed on pure adrenaline, nerves, and little else for days now. She felt sick to her stomach and had a mild headache to boot, but had still planned to go to work tonight. It wasn’t until she took her temperature and found that she was running a mild fever that she decided it was better to stay home.
She knew physicians showed up to work sick all the time, but she had personally never condoned the practice. It made little sense to her for an infected person to try to cure infected people.
“Are you sure you’re okay? I can send someone over or come check you out myself if need be.”
Nikki smiled into the phone. “I’m a doctor, too, Kelly,” she said to the chief of staff. “Remember?”
“That’s little comfort,” her boss said wryly. “We tend to think of ourselves as invincible and conveniently overlook our own symptoms.”
“True. But I’m sure all I need is some solid rest and then I’ll be fine.” Or as fine as she could be given the circumstances, she mentally qualified. “I’ll call you if I get any worse, but I think I’m just experiencing a system crash is all.”
“Little wonder,” Kelly sighed. “Look, Nik. I know you don’t want to discuss what happened Tuesday night, so I won’t ask you questions. But please know this: your job is secure. You have no worries here. So if you need to take some time off, do it. Please. Okay?”
“Thanks, Kelly,” Nikki murmured. “I’m lucky to have a boss like you.”
“Lucky my ass,” Kelly returned, making Nikki smile. “Cleveland General is lucky to have you. Now go get some sleep and feel better.”
A knock at the door startled Nikki, causing her to jump. She gritted her teeth at her ridiculous reaction, reminding herself that she could not and would not live like this. “That’s the door, Kelly. I better go answer it so I can get some sleep.”
“All right. Hang in there, kiddo. And remember, call me if you need anything.”
“Will do. Thanks, Kel.”
“Anytime.”
She switched off the cordless and set it down on the kitchen counter before padding out to the living room to answer the door. She was about to throw the door wide open to prove to herself she wasn’t a chicken, when she recalled that there was a fine line between living in constant paranoid fear and acting like a reckless idiot. She pressed her eye to the peephole instead, her heart—damn it, anyway—drumming faster than a Mötley Crüe track.
It was the postman, she thought, sighing in relief. Just the postman.
“Hey, John,” she said with a welcoming smile as she opened the front door. “What brings you upstairs?”
“Nikki,” he said, smiling back on a nod. He was an older man, probably in his late sixties and getting close to the age of retirement. Then again, he was also in excellent physical shape for a man his age and seemed to enjoy his job. “A package for you that wouldn’t fit in your box. Figured I’d walk it upstairs myself.”
“That was sweet. You didn’t have to do that. You could have left it in the office.”
“Hey, I gotta keep this old body in practice somehow!”
“You’re doing a fine job of it.” She grinned. “Thanks, John. You have a great day.”
“You, too.” He winked before turning on his heel and disappearing downstairs.
Nikki closed the door behind him and locked it. Glancing down at the package, she noted that it had a return address she didn’t recognize. That uneasy feeling swamped her again, and again her teeth ground together because of it.
“Stop it,” she seethed, chastising herself. “You will not live like this. Serial killers don’t put return addresses on packages unless they are too stupid to live!”
Richard, unfortunately, was not too stupid to live. She sighed as she traipsed back into the kitchen, set the package down on the counter, and carefully unwrapped it.
Nikki slowly smiled as she opened the box. “Five pounds of pistachios,” she murmured.
She had a feeling she knew who they were from. When she opened the accompanying card and realized her feeling had been right on target, her heart started thumping just as wildly as it was prone to do these past five days, albeit this time in a pleasurable way.
I had to go to five stores to find just the right kind. You damn well better eat them.
Thomas
Her eyes twinkled as she read and reread the card. His words were just like him: clipped, brash, and surly . . . yet strangely comforting.
Nikki grinned as she picked up the pistachios. Suddenly she was in the mood for pudding.
Between trying to track down his partner, different
cases he had to give equal time to, and a million other things, Thomas hadn’t had a spare moment to finish reading all of the emails exchanged between Lucifer and Nikki. It had been four days since he’d gotten through the first half of them. He was impatient to get to the second half.
Dr. Adenike had been on his mind a lot lately—far too much, in fact. The evening of her attack they had shared a nice sort of truce, albeit under horrible circumstances. She’d even begrudgingly given him her pistachios, he thought with a small smile. He wondered if the truce would last were he to approach her off the record.
Sighing, Thomas slid the CD of the emails into the proper drive. If he were honest with himself, he would have to admit that he hadn’t been quite as eager to read the remainder of the emails as he’d like to think he was. Any good cop would want to get as much information as possible when trying to solve a case. Thomas was a good cop. Yet he didn’t like reading these emails.
There were three reasons. First of all, Lucifer was lacking many things, but intelligence wasn’t among them. The emails would give hints to his personality, perhaps even suggest possible motivations if motivations even existed, but they would not lead the CPD to him. He would have thought that out, taken it under consideration with every word that he typed out.
Secondly, stupid and Neanderthal-like as it sounded, the email exchanges were getting Thomas damn jealous. The reaction was an insane one given that he and Nikki had never even dated, but there it was. He didn’t like reading about sexual fantasies and emotional needs she’d revealed to another man. He wanted her to reveal those things to him.
But the fact was, Nikki had never given off even the smallest vibe of interest in Thomas. He supposed he was acting like an ass feeling territorial over her when the only gesture of niceness let alone interest she’d thrown his way was a partially eaten carton of pistachios. He frowned. And she’d given up the pistachios during a vulnerable moment. So not even that counted.
There was also a third reason why Thomas didn’t like reading the emails. Namely, because they gave him a hint of the sort of smooth lines and caring pretense that had been thrown Amy’s way before her death. Lines that had been used to draw her into a deadly, carefully spun web from which there was no escape.