Secrets Amoung The Shadows (3 page)

Of course his finger wasn't on fire. It was only a cigarette. He lifted it to his lips, took a drag then lowered it and blew out a long, indolent stream of smoke.

As his head tilted to follow the movements of his own arm, she felt her gaze inexorably drawn along. He tossed the cigarette to the pavement and ground it out with his heel. Leanne shuddered. Somehow the simple action took on menacing overtones.

Greta barked and jumped for the window sill, startling Leanne and breaking the spell, diverting her attention to her dog. Greta growled, looked up at Leanne, then sat down beside her. The hairs on the dog's back bristled.

"You feel it, too? We can't both be wrong, can we, little one?" She turned back to the window, intent on lifting it and calling out to Eliot, demanding to know what he was doing there.

Leanne shivered, though the room was warm. The air seemed to hold a residual chill as if from the gaze that had come uninvited into her home.

When she'd talked to him in her office, Eliot had been attractive, likeable, sane. But she knew from experience that the mentally ill could appear completely well and normal just before they totally lost touch with reality, before they hurt themselves or someone else.

She stooped and gathered Greta into her arms. "You're more perceptive than I am. You growled at him. I thought he was sexy."

Eliot Kane was a very sick man, possibly even suffering from multiple personality disorder, just as he'd suggested. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He was a package deal. With the attractive, appealing man came the monster she'd seen outside her window.

He'd seen her, knew she had seen him. She would confront him when he came in for his appointment tomorrow.

***

He leaned against the big tree, well hidden among the shadows and lit another cigarette. The woman was terrified. He gained strength from her terror. He smiled as she pulled her drapes closed. As if she could keep him out. When the time came, she wouldn't be able to stop him any more than Eliot would. He was growing stronger every day. Things were falling into place.

Soon.

He closed his eyes, drinking in a sense of power. He pictured himself sneaking around, hiding in the overgrown bushes, checking doors and windows, testing to see if one would open.

And one finally did.

Quietly, full of a growing anticipation, he slid the window up and crawled in.

The interior of the house was fuzzy and out of focus. He didn't know what it looked like. He needed to see it so his dreams could gain substance and become real. He had seen through the window of her bedroom upstairs. He focused on that, on opening the door and seeing the bed clearly with its white comforter. Exactly what he'd glimpsed from the street.

But in his mind the woman lay in the bed instead of standing at the window. Her arms were outside the comforter, her head turned to one side on the pillow, dark, shiny hair spread out behind her. He stood still, watching the soft rise and fall of her breasts under the covers, admiring her, wanting her, knowing soon she would be his.

He moved soundlessly toward her, put his hands around her throat softly, caressingly.

She opened her eyes and looked at him, fear flooding her beautiful face. Her slim white hands thrust up, reaching for his, trying to push him away. But he tightened his grasp, drinking in her terror, becoming stronger, invincible. Her lithe body heaved under the dainty comforter, her legs thrashed about until the bed covers slid to the floor and he could see all of her, claim all of her as he choked the life from her body, watched the glaze of death slide over her eyes.

The vitality leaving her seemed to flow into him, and he was intoxicated, potent, in control of the whole world...free. Nothing was beyond his ability now.

Only a vision now, but soon…

Eliot shot upright in bed, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Sweat burst out on his forehead, and bile rose in his throat as the ecstasy from his dream was replaced with revulsion.

He turned his hands over, stared down at the palms, curled the fingers, and remembered with horror and disbelief how they'd felt wrapped around Leanne Warner's throat.

As she drove to work in the bright light of day, Leanne questioned her perceptions of the night before.

It had been real, not a dream. She hadn't imagined the man outside her window. Greta had sensed someone there. But had the man really been Eliot or had she, overly tired and with her thoughts focused on Eliot, seen his face on another man?

She walked into her office to find a message from Eliot Kane marked
Urgent
.

Even if not for that urgent request, she still would have known, the minute he answered the phone, that something was wrong. His voice came to her ears deep, resonant, and troubled.

"I just wanted to be sure you were all right," he said. His tone and his odd question clutched her stomach with an icy hand bringing back the eerie sensations of the night before.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

He hesitated, increasing her wariness. "No reason. We'll discuss it tonight. I have a call on the other line. I need to run."

He was lying about getting another call. She could hear it in his voice, but there seemed little point in pursuing the matter over the phone. Even so, she had to resist the impulse to demand to know what he'd been doing at her house...if he remembered being at her house.

"Very well," she agreed. "This afternoon, five o'clock."

"Yes," he agreed, and the word seemed to come from deep within a bottomless well of despair. "We have some matters that need to be discussed."

Did his call mean he remembered being at her house? Was his
problem
only a story to provide a basis for a defense of insanity for that woman's murder? He'd come to her after Kay Palmer's death, told her he'd dreamed it in detail. She had to acknowledge the possibility that he had committed the murder and was using her to build his defense.

One thing she did know  she'd distinctly heard the falseness in his voice when he'd lied to her about having another call, a falseness she hadn't heard before.

Perhaps they occupied the same body, but this was not the same man who had stood outside her window last night. Deep in his eyes she could see kindness, concern and anxiety but not the hatred and anger she'd seen the night before.

The unbidden thought came to her that this was Dr. Jekyll.

She dismissed the thought. She had far too little evidence on which to base such a drastic diagnosis. That would be every bit as unprofessional as her sensual thoughts of him the night before.

She took his hand and felt the firmness and warmth, the determination of his grip.

The doctor in her recognized that this compelling man could also be the creature who'd stood outside her window. He could be a murderer trying to con a psychiatrist so he could escape the death penalty. At best, he was mentally ill.

But, against her will and her common sense, something deep inside was drawn to his magnetism and strength.

She dropped his hand abruptly and turned away to lead him into her office. What on earth was the matter with her? Had she suddenly become self-destructive?

She looked back and saw that he wasn't following her but still stood firmly planted in the reception area, his expression grim, his fists clenched at his sides.

"Come in, and we'll discuss it," she said, trying to maintain her composure in spite of a return of the fear from the night before. Her heart raced, and breathing became difficult.

"We were here alone yesterday, Eliot." What was he working up to? She fought a sudden desire to bolt past him and through the door. He wasn't making her feel any better with his strange comments.

"Yesterday I hadn't dreamed about killing you." He clenched his fists so tightly the knuckles turned white. His jaw was set square and determined, but his expression was tortured.

She made an effort to smile confidently. It was, after all, her job to be reassuring. "As you can see, I'm very much alive and unharmed."

"So was Kay Palmer...after the first dream. We've got to face the possibility that I may have a split personality, and that other side of me killed her. What if I should suddenly turn into that other person and do something to you?"

She considered the possibility, had been considering it for the last few minutes. But she had chosen this career so she could help people like Eliot, and indulging her fear wouldn't help him. She'd never before been frightened of a patient. She was trained to deal with mentally ill people.

"Please come in and sit down, Eliot, and let's get to work." She amazed herself with the calmness in her voice, a calmness she was far from feeling. "We have a lot to talk about."

Turning away from him, she strode into her office and sat behind her desk, the normalcy of the action restoring some of her confidence.

Reluctantly, it seemed, he followed. This time he went straight to the window and opened the drapes, then took a tentative seat on the edge of the recliner. If he was trying to set up a defense of insanity to escape prosecution for Kay Palmer's murder, he was certainly playing his role convincingly.

On the positive side, if he was using her—needed her testimony—he wouldn't hurt her.

Somehow the thought wasn't as comforting as it should be. She didn't want to believe he was using her.

She didn't want to believe he had severe mental problems, either. But it was becoming more and more obvious that one or the other must be true.

She took out her recorder and turned it on.

"Eliot," she began, watching him closely for his reaction, "before we go into your dream, I'd like to discuss your visit to my house last night."

His pupils constricted, and he paled visibly. Pretty tough reactions to fake. "What are you talking about?"

"Last night you came to my house and stood in the street watching me."

"That's impossible," he said, but he didn't sound like he believed his own assertion. "I don't even know where you live."

That was true, she realized. And her home phone was unlisted. Had she made a mistake after all?

"So you're saying you weren't there, you didn't stand across the street and look into my bedroom window?"

He leaned his forehead against his hand and groaned, then lifted his gaze to hers again. She flinched from the agony in that gaze. "In my dream," he said softly, "I was at your house. I crossed the street, opened a window, went upstairs and strangled you in your bed."

His quiet words settled around her, pushing her down into a quicksand of fear. She hadn't been mistaken. He'd been there. Did that also mean his other dream had been real, that he'd killed Kay Palmer?

"What did my house look like in your dream?" she asked, making a conscious effort to sound detached and professional rather than frightened and uncertain.

He took a deep breath, and she realized he was working every bit as hard if not harder than she to stay in control. "Two story. I couldn't tell exactly what color in the dark, but it was a light shade. Maybe white. Older, turn of the century style. Lots of trees and bushes. A small front porch. In the bedroom I saw an iron bedframe and a white comforter."

A chill encompassed her entire body.

"How close am I?" he demanded.

She swallowed, hoping her voice would come out normal. "One hundred percent. You've accurately described the details of my house and only the details you could have seen from the street. Even the comforter on my bed which you saw as white actually has blue flowers, too small to be seen from a distance."

For a moment his eyes squeezed closed and his mouth compressed as if he would shut out her words. But he opened his eyes and looked at her again, his chin lifting slightly, determinedly. "What did I do?"

"Nothing. You stared up at me, then left." At least, she thought he left. "I'd like to hypnotize you and let you tell me about your dream."

"Hypnotize me?" He scowled, folding his arms across his chest.

She had expected resistance. If he was lying, of course he'd oppose hypnosis. But even if he was telling the truth, someone with as much self-control as he would be reluctant to relinquish that control.

She smiled and leaned back, holding a pencil at both ends in a determinedly casual gesture. "Again, television and the movies have led you astray. I can't hypnotize you and take over your mind, make you bark like a dog or go out and..." She stopped herself in midsentence. She'd been about to say
go out and commit murder.

"Do things you wouldn't ordinarily do," she finished. "You'll be in charge of your soul at all times." She changed her smile to a grin in an effort to make her last statement sound flippant, less grim than the situation warranted.