The Way You Look Tonight (20 page)

‘That's a relief. Nevertheless, my husband and I will be coming home as soon as possible. Unfortunately, he picked up some kind of bug. He'll probably be too sick to fly for a couple of days.' She sounded disgusted and accusatory. Deborah pitied the man who had to spend the next two days trapped in a hotel room with her.

‘Couldn't you come ahead by yourself?' she asked.

‘I'm not good at traveling alone,' Mrs Robinson said stiffly. ‘Besides, my husband needs me.'

And your son is missing, perhaps dead, but you're not coming home because you've found out your daughter is safe and that's what really counts, Deborah thought bitterly.

‘You will let me know if Steven is found, won't you?'

‘Of course,' Deborah said, wondering how Mrs Robinson could sound as if Steve might have just gone out for the day, wanting to know when he returned.

‘And Deborah, I hope you won't talk to the press. This family has already suffered so much because of negative publicity.'

Deborah now knew what people meant when they said they were so angry they saw red. She felt a rush of fury so intense it almost blinded her. Of all the shallow, stupid things to be worried about at a time like this. ‘I will talk to reporters if I feel it will help locate Steve.'

Mrs Robinson sighed. ‘Well, I can't stop you, although I'm asking you as Steven's mother.' Deborah rolled her eyes at the woman's softened voice which begged for pity. Deborah didn't answer and finally Mrs Robinson went on. ‘If I don't hear from you in the next few days, I'll get in touch when I return to Wheeling. Then we'll decide what to do.'

We'll decide what to do?
Deborah thought. What on earth was there to decide? Whether or not to keep searching for Steve?

Mrs Robinson uttered a curt goodbye, and as Deborah hung up, she noted that the woman hadn't even inquired about her grandchildren.

Four

Linda Amato, RN, looked at her watch and sighed in exhausted relief. Forty-five minutes and she could go home. Of course, when she arrived there would still be at least two loads of laundry to do if the kids were to have anything clean to wear tomorrow, and no doubt there would be a sink full of dirty dishes. She could let the dishes go until tomorrow, but by then the food remains would be petrified. No, better to wash them and be done with it. Considering all she had to do, she'd be lucky to get to bed by midnight. These double shifts were killing her, but she'd have to endure them until her ex-husband came through with the overdue child support.

Since old Mr Havers in 201 had mercifully quieted down after being given a Valium, and Mrs Weston had worn herself out demanding to be helped with unnecessary trips to the bathroom every fifteen minutes, the halls in ICU had become quiet. Funny, Linda thought. On a bad night the constant noise nearly drove everyone crazy, but when the clamor suddenly died, the silence turned eerie.

She quietly opened the door to Sally Yates's room and moved toward the motionless form on the bed. Every time she looked at Sally she felt like crying. When Sally was hired by the hospital six months ago, Linda thought she was one of the most beautiful girls she'd ever seen. Now Sally's jaw was wired shut, the left side of her face was horribly bruised and still disfigured by stitches where her jaw bone had ripped through the delicate skin, part of her hair had been shaved where that lunatic had bashed her skull, causing a massive hematoma, and her arms were discolored from countless assaults with needles delivering painkillers and drawing blood. An IV tube hung beside the bed, and Sally was catheterized. Miraculously, the swelling from the rope they'd found around her neck had gone down and she'd been taken off the respirator. The doctors said there hadn't been a real attempt to murder by strangulation. That seemed to be for show. Apparently, the blows to the head had been meant to kill her and very nearly had.

They knew new it was The Dark Alley Strangler who had attacked Sally. It was the most horrifying thing that had ever entered Linda's disappointing but mundane world, and brought out a ferocity in her she'd never known she possessed. For the first time in her life, she felt like she could kill someone and not experience a twinge of remorse over her act. Well, at least the bastard had worn a condom while raping Sally, so the risk of AIDS was reduced, even though she could have come into contact with infected blood through any of her many lacerations.

Sally's mother claimed that her baby girl Amy cried constantly for her mama, but she wouldn't have been allowed to see her even if she were older than eight months. Sally was no sight for a child, no matter how young. But Amy was in good hands. Sally's mother might be critical and tart-tongued, but she adored her daughter and granddaughter. Although she was too stoic to cry when she saw Sally, the anguish in her eyes revealed the depth of her feeling. Sally's husband was another matter. Jack Yates had stomped into the hospital room the day after Sally's attack, looked at her with his blunt, stupid face and expressionless eyes, and muttered, ‘Is she gonna live?'

‘We hope so,' young Dr Healy said. Linda thought the world of Dr Healy. He was handsome, brilliant, and never yelled at the nurses, which was a rare trait among doctors. Jack Yates continued to stare at his savagely beaten, comatose young wife, not going near her, and Dr Healy added gently, ‘I must tell you, Mr Yates, even though we're doing all we can, it doesn't look good right now.'

Yates turned his cold eyes on him. ‘You reap what you sow,' he pronounced in a voice of sanctimonious doom. ‘She's a tramp, hangin' out in a bar like that. If she lives, I'm gonna divorce her. And I'll tell you another thing – I'm not payin' you or this hospital one dime. Let her ma take care of her bills. If she'd raised her better, Sally wouldn't be here.'

As he stalked out, Dr Healy looked after him with fire in his usually mild blue eyes and said loudly, ‘Son of a bitch.' Yates stiffened but otherwise didn't acknowledge the doctor's words. He also never visited Sally again.

Linda shook her head angrily at the memory and bent over Sally, grasping her right wrist to take the girl's pulse. In the ghostly quiet of the room, she nearly yelped when Sally hissed, ‘Linda?'

‘Good heavens, Sally!' Linda gasped. She peered at the young woman. ‘Sally, are you coming out of it?' She leaned closer to her face. ‘Honey, can you open your eyes?'

At first there was nothing. Sally lay utterly still, and Linda was beginning to think she'd imagined Sally's voice, but she wasn't going to give up easily. She grasped Sally's limp, cold hand and said soothingly, ‘Honey, you're alive. You're in the hospital. Everyone loves you and is praying for you.' Everyone except your cretin of a husband, she thought. ‘Sally, please say something.'

Finally Sally's right eye opened slightly. The other was still swollen shut. ‘Amy?'

Linda beamed and looked upward. ‘Oh, God, thank you for this miracle!' She gazed at Sally. ‘Amy's with your mother. She's fine, although she misses you terribly. Don't worry, Jack's not going anywhere near her,' she added, knowing that Sally always worried about the child when she was in Jack's care. ‘Listen, Sally, everything is going to be
fine
. You're
alive
, thank the Lord.'

Sally drew a labored breath. ‘How long?'

‘How long have you been in a coma? Oh, a few days,' Linda said airily. If she told Sally it had been eleven days, the girl would be badly frightened. Usually patients who were comatose for longer than three days stayed that way.

Sally drew a labored breath. ‘Finger?'

‘Finger?' Linda repeated blankly, then remembered that Sally's ring finger had been nearly severed. ‘You have your finger. They reattached it. You probably won't have full use of it, but what's the difference? It'll still look just fine. A little scar, that's all,' she said gaily.

‘Catch him?'

Linda sobered. She wanted so badly to say, ‘Yes, they caught the monster who did this to you,' but that would be a blatant lie, not a little evasion. Linda drew the line at lies. ‘No, honey, they didn't get him.' Fear leaped in Sally's beautiful, opened eye. ‘But they
will
. The police are going wild over this, and I heard there's a witness.' Sally continued to look at her fearfully, and Linda added, ‘I'm going to leave you for a few minutes and get a doctor. Healy's on duty tonight. You would not
believe
how that man has hovered over you. I always knew he was sweet on you. My gosh, he's going to be
thrilled
!'

Sally's hand abruptly tightened on hers. ‘No! No doctor.'

‘No
doctor
! Why, honey, what in the world are you talking about? You
must
see a doctor.'

Sally's grip increased. ‘
No!
' she croaked and hissed at the same time around the wires holding her jaw in place. Now she looked terrified. ‘Didn't get him.'

‘No, they didn't get the man who attacked you, but now that you're awake, you can identify him. You
can
identify him, can't you?'

‘Not sure.' She touched a dry tongue to dry lips. Linda poured water from a pitcher into a plastic cup, held it near Sally's face and guided the straw to her lips. Sally took a couple of swallows and started coughing. Linda withdrew the cup. ‘Well, you could give it a try. Identifying the man, I mean.'

‘
No!
' Linda drew back at the force of Sally's voice.

‘I don't understand. Why not?'

‘Maybe can't. But if he sinks I can…'

‘If he thinks you can, what?'

Sally's battered face managed an expression of complete frustration. ‘He's still
out
dere. Come after me.'

‘Oh,' Linda said slowly. ‘But you're safe here.'

‘No! Not from him!'

‘Sweetie, he's not superhuman. There are people all over this place.'

‘Lithen.'

Linda looked at her in complete confusion. ‘Listen to what? I don't hear a thing.'

‘Where all de people?'

Comprehension dawned on Linda's narrow, lined face. Hadn't she been aware of the unnerving silence earlier? Wasn't it true that sometimes at night the halls
did
seem deserted? Of course, they never were for long. But sometimes nurses were in patients' rooms or absorbed with paperwork in the nurses' station. It was possible, just barely possible, that someone could sneak into a patient's room.

‘What do you want me to do, Sally?' Linda asked helplessly.

‘Don't tell. Pretend I still in coma.'

‘Oh, Sally, how can I pretend you're still in a coma? You need a doctor's attention!'

‘No! If doctor knows, other people find out. End up on news. He's still out dere.
He'll
know. Linda,
pleath
.'

Linda closed her eyes, ignoring Sally's hand clenched on hers. It wasn't right not to tell Dr Healy. Not right at all. But she loved Sally like a younger sister and she'd been through so much. And she was so upset.

‘Okay,' she said at last. ‘I don't feel good about this, but I won't tell for now.'

‘Promith?'

‘Promise,' Linda said reluctantly.

A tear trickled down Sally's purple and mauve cheek. The air seemed to go out of her. She was exhausted. ‘Sank you.'

‘You're welcome, honey.' Linda bent down and gave Sally a light kiss on the forehead. But as she left the room, she was deeply troubled. She knew she was a woman of little imagination. That's why she
always
went by the book. No variation of routine, no reliance on her own judgment. She didn't trust herself. And now look what she was doing – hiding the fact that a critically injured patient had awakened from a coma. No, it wasn't right. It would backfire, she knew it. She could lose her job over it. Worse still, Sally might suffer because of it. Linda's fingers twisted nervously. Maybe she should ignore her promise to Sally. After all, the woman probably wasn't thinking clearly at all. Sally had just awakened from an eleven-day coma after a brutal rape and beating. She probably didn't even fully realize what she was saying. She was jeopardizing her health, her
life
, because of some paranoid fear.

A voice somewhere deep in Linda's mind spoke up, a voice she usually tried to ignore because it
always
brought up disturbing possibilities and complications. Normally she could shut it out, but not this time. This time it kept saying, ‘Maybe Sally
isn't
reacting to some paranoid fear. Maybe if you tell,
you'll
be the one jeopardizing Sally's health, her very
life
.' And a chill rippled across Linda's neck when she remembered Sally's tortured, terrified words – ‘He's still out there.'

One

Although the children still asked every few hours if she'd heard from Daddy, Deborah noticed that the hope had faded from their eyes. Her deepest pain came from their hurt acceptance of the fact that Steve wasn't coming home. She wanted to tell them to cheer up – Daddy would probably be home for Christmas, but that would be cruel. If Steve didn't turn up – and she had an increasing certainty that he wouldn't – they would be crushed. As for herself, she suffered a perpetual coldness deep inside her. No matter how many sweaters she layered on, no matter how high she turned up the heating, the chill remained.

She was adjusting the thermostat for the third time since she'd awakened when someone rang the doorbell. She stiffened and hesitated. Joe had gone home for a couple of hours to pick up his messages and get fresh clothes. It was a wild, blustery day, and she'd already been startled a couple of times by the spiny, naked limbs of a forsythia slapping against the living-room window. The children, who had quarreled most of the morning, were now playing quietly in the basement and the house felt uncomfortably silent.

The doorbell rang again, and she chided herself for being so frightened. It was 11 a.m. Artie Lieber was not going to come to the front door and ring the bell in broad daylight with surveillance posted on the house.

She opened the door. Fred Dillman, Mrs Dillman's son, stood windblown and shivering on the front porch. ‘Mrs Robinson? I hope I'm not stopping by at a bad time. I would have called first but I've been at the hospital—'

‘Come in,' Deborah said. ‘I've been so worried about your mother. How is she?'

‘Just the same,' Fred told her. He was a burly man, at least six feet two with thick brown hair heavily laced with silver. Last year Mrs Dillman had told her Fred was a test pilot. In reality, he was an optometrist. ‘I don't think Mom's going to pull out of this.'

Fred looked genuinely sad, and Deborah wondered why he had neglected his mother if he cared so much. As if reading her mind, he said, ‘If only Mom had gone to live with my sister in Florida, this wouldn't have happened.'

‘She could have come to live with you,' Deborah couldn't resist saying.

He flushed with embarrassment. ‘My wife wouldn't allow it. She and Mom have never gotten along. You know how it can be with in-laws.' Oh,
did
she. ‘Besides, you can't
make
someone like Mom live where she doesn't want to. She'd just run off.'

‘Maybe so.'

‘She's managed fairly well on her own, with a lot of help from you and your husband. I appreciate your kindness. I couldn't come often – I'm so busy. She also got it into her head that I was trying to poison her. Can you imagine anything so fantastic?'

‘I had no idea. She never said anything about
that
particular fantasy to me, but I've heard others.'

Fred grinned. ‘No doubt concerning the wild shenanigans of my poor father.'

‘He does seem to have led quite a life these last few years.' Deborah suddenly realized they were still standing in the entrance hall. She invited Fred in, but he declined. ‘I really came to ask another favor. I've been staying in a motel, but I think I'll move into the house today since I'll probably be here for a few more days. And even though Mom's unconscious, I can't stand seeing her in that thin hospital gown. I'd like to take a robe, slippers, some toiletries – whatever women need when they're in the hospital. I wondered if you'd mind going to the house with me and gathering up some things. I'm sure you'd know more about what I should take than I do.'

Although Fred seemed personable, Deborah felt like telling him taking a brush and lipstick to his unconscious mother was doing far too little much too late, but now didn't seem like the time to dole out unwanted moral judgments. She hesitated, then said, ‘Would you mind if I brought my children along? We've had some trouble—'

‘I know all about it.' Fred's cheeks pinked again. He had an unsettling way of becoming embarrassed easily, but Deborah told herself how easy it was for people to feel nonplussed in this situation. ‘It's been all over the news,' he added hastily. ‘I'm very sorry. I suppose you haven't had any word about him?'

‘Nothing good,' Deborah said cautiously. She had difficulty remembering that the general public did not know that the FBI suspected Steve of being a serial killer. The news broadcasts had mentioned only the details of his disappearance. Reminding herself of this, she relaxed slightly. ‘I'm still hoping my husband is all right, but he vanished without a trace.'

‘What a terrible situation. You don't think what happened to your husband had anything to do with the attack on Mom, do you?'

She hesitated again, then decided to be open with him. ‘I don't know if there's a connection, but there is something you should know. The night your mother was attacked, she came over here claiming my husband had been watching her get ready for bed. She said he wasn't standing on the ground, and there was a light behind him.'

‘That's ridiculous,' Fred said.

‘That's what my friend Barbara and I thought at first. But after we found your mother, Barbara was troubled by the idea that maybe someone
had
been spying on her from the house across the street. It's been vacant for years, or so we thought, but Barbara discovered it had been rented several months ago to a man we've never seen.'

Fred looked incredulous. ‘You mean you think the man who lives there was watching Mom and then
attacked
her?'

‘We can't know for sure, but it would be possible to look into your mother's bedroom window from an upstairs room in that house, and the person who rented it is a mystery.'

‘Do the police know about this?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did they search it?'

‘Yes, but they found nothing.' She omitted to tell him that they were only able to obtain a search warrant because they were convinced that
Steve
might be the mysterious renter.

‘Can anyone look in the house?'

‘No. It's private property, whether it's empty or not. But a private investigator, a friend of the family who's been staying with me and the children, sneaked over one night and looked in the windows. He didn't see anyone.'

‘Well, how much could he see at night? Why didn't he go during the day?'

‘As I said, this house is under surveillance. The police watch every move we make, and I don't think they'd let Joe get away with an illegal search. What little he could do had to be done at night with him being careful not to be seen.'

‘And whoever attacked Mom had to do the same thing. He came out at night. But why on earth would anyone want to hurt
her
? She's harmless.'

‘Maybe she isn't so harmless,' Deborah said. ‘She's very observant, although she's not always able to give you an accurate description of what she's seen. Still, I believe there's something strange going on in that house, and your mother might have witnessed something she wasn't supposed to see.' She shrugged and smiled sheepishly. ‘I know that sounds like I've watched too many Alfred Hitchcock movies, but I think it's a real possibility.'

Fred frowned. ‘It doesn't sound so far-fetched to me. Maybe it's a good thing I'll be staying in the house. Maybe I can see something interesting from her bedroom window.'

Ten minutes later, after the children had been bundled up against the bitter wind, Fred opened the door to his mother's house. A slightly damp mustiness wafted over them. Kim wrinkled her nose and opened her mouth to speak, but Deborah nudged her. ‘I turned the thermostat down the other day,' she told Fred. ‘Your mother worries about the heating bills and since the house is empty…'

Fred nodded. ‘That's fine. The odor is coming from the furniture. I don't know why my parents didn't buy some new things through the years. It's not as if these pieces are valuable antiques – they're a collection of junk.'

The children went to a table laden with pictures. ‘We know who everybody is,' Brian said. ‘Uncle Robert, Grandma Daisy—'

 

‘You look at the pictures and I'll go upstairs with Mr Dillman,' Deborah said. ‘Be back in just a few minutes.'

Fred followed her upstairs, although he did nothing but stand around while Deborah rummaged through the closet and dresser drawers. She found a pretty navy robe with a ruffled white collar which looked as if it had never been worn, pitifully ragged underwear with loose elastic, a decent pair of white house slippers, a tube of dryish red lipstick, and a new bottle of Emeraude cologne which Fred said he'd sent his mother for her birthday. Last of all, she placed Mrs Dillman's well-worn Bible on top of the clothes in a suitcase she'd brought from home. ‘I guess that about does it,' she said.

Fred took the suitcase and started downstairs. Deborah lingered in the bedroom, wandering over to a cedar chest beneath the window. Although the rest of the furniture was worn, this piece seemed to have been lovingly polished. She couldn't resist raising the lid. It was obviously handmade and inside an inscription had been burned into the wood: ‘To Virginia from Mother and Father, 1922.' Virginia. It was impossible for Deborah to think of her as anything except ‘Mrs Dillman'.

She lowered the lid and looked through the sheer curtains. The wind had picked up a paper bag and sent it skittering down the street like tumbleweed on the prairie. Across the street a stray cat wandered across the lawn of the O'Donnell house. It stopped and looked up. Deborah followed its gaze and went rigid when for just a moment she caught the flash of a pale face in an upstairs window looking back at her.

She bolted down the stairs and out the front door. She caught a brief glimpse of Fred gaping at her while the children rocketed along in her wake like playful puppies. Out on the walk, Deborah looked all around the cul-de-sac for a car or van that could be the surveillance vehicle and saw none. She knew it had to be around, concealed so as not to scream its presence. That didn't help her, though. The street was empty, and so was the upstairs window in the O'Donnell house.

Two

Ever since she awakened from the coma, Sally had tried not to sleep, especially at night, especially after Linda told Dr Healy that she had regained consciousness. She accepted with bleak resignation that Linda could not keep such a serious secret. Linda thought she was doing what was best to preserve her life. Sally knew she'd inadvertently done what would most likely cause her death.

She didn't have a watch or a clock in the room, but the television had been turned off, and that was always done at 11 p.m. She'd drifted to sleep during the nine o'clock movie, at least an hour ago. Maybe
hours
ago. She had no way of knowing how much time had passed.

Her eyes darted around the room. At least it was small and spare and she could see fairly well by the light coming in through her open door. No hulking shapes that didn't belong. No odd noises. Just the usual chatter from the nurses' station and an occasional shout from the man down the hall who thought he was back in the Philippines during World War II. Normal. Everything was normal.

A yawn formed and, unable to escape her wired jaw, flared her nostrils until they hurt and filled her eyes with tears. She was amazed that after being in a coma so long she was so terribly sleepy. She knew it was because of her severe injuries. Also, she'd managed to stay awake after she'd talked to Linda last night. Twenty-four hours she'd spent wide awake. And how sickeningly dismayed she'd been when a beaming Dr Healy strode in that afternoon with Linda skulking along behind him. Tears had run down Sally's face at the sight of them, and for the first few minutes she couldn't make herself speak to Linda. But she'd never really had any hope that Linda would keep her consciousness quiet. If only she'd awakened when she was alone, then
no one
would know.

Her eyelids felt leaden. I
can't
go to sleep again! she thought fiercely. If only I could have a cup of strong black coffee. But this isn't a hotel. They won't give me coffee at this hour. Maybe I could ask for speed, she mused. That would set them talking at the nurses' station.

Even as she inwardly smiled, her eyes were closing. She struggled, but the dark waves of sleep overpowered her.

She was back in the alley, bending over the man with a bloody handkerchief pressed to his forehead. He pulled it away, stood to put his arm around her shoulders, and she saw there was no cut on his head – only a red stain, probably a drop of food coloring. His hand went to his pocket and in a flash a rope tightened around her neck. His fist slammed into her face and, as she reeled, he pulled her off her feet and dragged her—

Her eyes snapped open. Her heart beat against her ribs in strong, painful strokes. How long had she been asleep? And why was her door now
closed
?

She caught a whiff of scent – not cologne, just the scent of another warm human being. A whimper escaped through her wired jaw. Frantically she reached for the buzzer to summon a nurse, but a hand closed around hers. ‘Now you don't want to do that, do you, Sally?'

She drew in breath for a scream, but another hand closed over her mouth, brutally gripping her broken jaw. ‘You look so delicate but you're a hard one to kill,' the husky whisper went on with terrifying gentleness. ‘Some of the others were easy, some not. But none of them was like you. Tell me, where do you get your strength, Sally? That interests me. Why are you so damned
strong
?'

Fear raged through her. She kicked under the sheet and blanket, kicked with all her strength. He chuckled. ‘Feisty to the end, eh? Going to go down fighting like the street trash you are? Well, even though it makes this thing more difficult for me, I admire you. But only for your strength.
Not
for your morals. Women like you don't know what morals are.'