Obsidian Butterfly ab-9 Read online

  We looked at each other, and again I had the sense of his fear, his helplessness, things that Edward just didn't feel. Or so I'd thought.

  Bernardo came in with a tray of coffees. He must have caught something in the air because he said, "Did I miss something?"

  "No," Edward said, and he went back to the papers in his lap.

  I stood and started sorting papers. "You haven't missed anything yet."

  "I just love being lied to."

  "We're not lying," I said.

  "Then why is the tension level so high in here?"

  "Shut up, Bernardo," Edward said.

  Bernardo didn't take it as an insult. He just shut up and handed out the coffee.

  I sorted out all the witness reports I could find, then spent the next three hours reading them. I'd read one report back to front and found out nothing the police and Edward hadn't known weeks ago. Now I was looking for something new, something that the police, Edward, the experts they'd called in, nobody had found. It sounded egotistical, but Edward seemed sure I'd find it, whatever it was. Though I was beginning to wonder if it was confidence in me or sheer desperation on Edward's part that made him so sure I'd find something. I'd give it my best shot, and that was all I could do.

  I looked down at several stacks of witness reports and settled in to read. I know most people read each report in full, or almost in full, then move to the next, but in a serial crime you were looking for a pattern. On serial murders I'd learned to divide the files up into parts: all the witness statements, then all the forensic reports, then the pictures of the crime scene, etc ... Sometimes I did the pictures first, but I was putting it off. I'd seen enough in the hospital to make me squeamish. So the pictures could wait, and I could still do legitimate work on the case without having to see all the horrors. Procrastination with a purpose, what could be better?

  Bernardo kept making us all coffee and continued to play host, going back and forth when the coffee ran low, offering food, though we both declined. When he brought me my umpteenth cup of coffee, I finally asked, "Not that I'm not grateful, but you didn't strike me as the domestic type, Bernardo. Why the perfect host routine? It's not even your house." He took the question as an invitation to move closer to my chair until his jean-clad thigh was touching the arm, but it wasn't touching me so that was fine. "You want to ask Edward to go for coffee?"

  I looked across the table at Edward. He didn't bother to look up from the papers in his hands. I smiled. "No, I was more thinking I'd get my own."

  Bernardo turned and leaned his butt against the table, arms crossed over his, chest. Muscles played in his arms as if he were flexing just a bit for my benefit. I didn't think he was even aware he was doing it, as if it were habit. "Truthfully?" he asked.

  I looked up at him and sipped the coffee he'd brought me. "That would be nice."

  "I've read the reports more than once. I don't want to read them again. I'm tired of playing detectives and wish we could just go kill something, or at least fight something."

  "Me, too," Edward said. He was watching us now with cool blue eyes. "But we have to know what we're fighting, and the answer to that is in here somewhere." He motioned at the mounds of papers.

  Bernardo shook his head. "Then why haven't we, or the police found the answer in all this paper?" He ran his finger down the nearest stack. "I don't think paperwork is going to catch this bastard."

  I smiled up at him. "You're just bored."

  He looked down at me, a little startled expression on his face, then he laughed, head back, mouth wide as if he were howling at the moon. "You haven't known me long enough to know me that well." Laughter was still sparkling in his brown eyes, and I wished it were a different pair of brown eyes. My chest was suddenly tight with missing Richard. I looked down at the papers in my lap, not sure if it would show in my eyes. If my eyes showed sorrow, I didn't want Bernardo to see it. If my eyes showed longing, I didn't want him to misinterpret it.

  "Are you bored, Bernardo?" Edward asked.

  Bernardo turned at the waist so he could see Edward with a minimum of movement. It put his bare chest facing me. "No women, no television, nothing to kill, bored, bored, bored."

  I found myself staring at his chest. I had an urge to rise up out of my chair spill the papers to the floor and run my tongue over his chest. The image was so strong, I had to close my eyes. I had feelings like this around Richard and Jean-Claude, but not around strangers. Why was Bernardo affecting me like this?

  "Are you all right?" He was bending over me, face so close that his face filled my entire vision.

  I jerked back, pushing the chair and rising to my feet. The chair crashed to the floor, papers spilled everywhere. "Shit," I said with feeling. I picked up the chair.

  He bent down to help pick up the papers. His bare back made a firm curved line as he started shoveling the papers back into a pile. I watched the way the small muscles in his lower back worked, fascinated by it.

  I stepped away from him. Edward was watching me from across the table. His gaze was heavy, as if he knew what I was thinking, feeling. I knew it wasn't true, but he knew me better than most. I didn't want anyone to know that seemed to be unwarrantedly attracted to Bernardo. It was too embarrassing.

  Edward said, "Leave us alone for a while, Bernardo."

  Bernardo stood with a bundle of papers, looking from one to the other of us. "Did I just miss something?"

  "Yes," Edward said, "Now get out."

  Bernardo looked at me. He looked a question at me, but I gave nothing back. I could feel my face unreadable and empty. Bernardo sighed and handed me the papers. "How long?"

  "I'll let you know," Edward said.

  "Wonderful, I'll be in my room when Daddy decides to let me come out." He stalked through the nearest door where Olaf had vanished through.

  "No one likes being treated like a child," I said.

  "It's the only way to deal with Bernardo," Edward said. His gaze was very steady on my face, and he looked way too serious for comfort.

  I started sorting the papers in my hands. I used the cleared space on the table that I'd made hours ago when I was still leaning over the table instead of slumping in the chair to read. I concentrated on sorting and didn't look up until I felt him beside me.

  I looked then and found his eyes weren't blank. They were intense, but I still couldn't read them. "You said you hadn't been dating either of them for six months."

  I nodded.

  "Have you been dating anyone else?" he asked.

  I shook my head.

  "No sex, then," he said.

  I shook my head again. My heart was beating faster. I so did not want him to figure this out.

  "Why not?" he asked.

  I looked away then, unable to meet his eyes. "I don't have any moral high ground to preach from anymore, Edward, but I don't do casual sex, you know that."

  "You're jumping out of your skin every time Bernardo comes near you."

  Heat climbed up my face. "Is it that noticeable?"

  "Only to me," he said.

  I was grateful for that. I spoke without looking at him. "I don't understand it. He's a bastard. Even my hormones usually have better taste than that." Edward was leaning against the table, arms crossed over his white shirt. It was exactly how Bernardo had been sitting, but it didn't move me, and I didn't think it was just the shirt. Edward just did not affect me in that way and never would.

  "He's handsome, and you're horny."

  The heat that had been fading, flared until it felt like my skin would burn.

  "Don't say it that way."

  "It's the truth."

  I looked at him then, and let the anger show in my eyes. "Damn you."

  "Maybe your body knows what you need."

  I widened eyes at him. "Meaning what?"

  "A good uncomplicated fuck. That's what I mean." He still looked calm, unmoved as if he'd said something entirely different.

  "What are you saying?"

  "Fuck B
ernardo. Give your body what it needs. You don't have to go back to the monsters to get laid."

  "I cannot believe you said that to me."

  "Why not? If you were having sex with someone else, wouldn't it be easier to forget Richard and Jean-Claude? Isn't that part of their hold on you, especially the vampire. Admit it, Anita. If you weren't celibate, you wouldn't be missing them as much."

  I opened my mouth to protest, closed it, and thought about what he'd said. Was he right? Was part of the reason I was still mooning over them the lack of sex? Yeah, I guess it was, but it wasn't just that. "I miss the sex, yeah, but I miss the intimacy, Edward. I miss looking at them both and knowing they're mine. Knowing I can have every inch of them. I miss Sunday after church and having Richard stay over to watch old movies. I miss watching Jean-Claude watch me eat a meal." I shook my head. "I miss them, Edward."

  "Your problem, Anita, is that you wouldn't know an uncomplicated fuck if it bit you on the ass."

  I wasn't sure whether to smile or be mad, so my voice was a little amused and a little angry. "And your relationship with Donna is so uncomplicated?"

  "It was at the beginning," he said. "Can you say that about either of yours?"

  I shook my head. "I'm not a casual person, Edward, not in anything."

  He sighed. "I know that. When you give your friendship, it's for life. When you hate someone, it's forever. When you say you're going to kill someone, you do it. One of the things making you squirm about your boys is the fact that for you, love should be forever."

  "And what's wrong with that?"

  He shook his head. "Sometimes I forget how young you are."

  "And what does that mean?"

  "It means you complicate your life, Anita." He raised a hand before I could say it, and said it for me. "I know I've screwed up with Donna, but I went into it meaning to be casual, meaning it to just be part of the act. You always go into everything like it's life or death. Only life and death are life and death."

  "And you think that sleeping with Bernardo would fix all that."

  "It'd be a start," he said.

  I shook my head. "No."

  "Your final word?" he asked.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Fine, I won't bring it up again."

  "Great," I said and looked into that blank, Edward face.

  "Being with Donna has made you more personal, more warm and fuzzy. I'm not comfortable with the new Edward."

  "Neither am I," he said.

  Edward went back to his side of the table, and we both started reading again. Usually, silence between us was companionable and not strained. But this quiet was full of unsaid advice: me to him about Donna, and him to me about the boys. Edward and I playing Dear Abby to each other. It would have been funny if it hadn't been so sad.

  21

  AN HOUR LATER, I'd finished the witness reports. I stretched my lower back while still sitting in the chair, just bending slowly at the waist until my hands touched the floor or almost touched the floor. Three stretches, and I could press my palms flat to the floor. Better. I got up and checked my watch. Midnight. I felt stiff and strange, estranged from this quiet room and the peaceful surroundings. My head was filled with what I'd read, and what I'd read hadn't been peaceful.

  Standing, I could see Edward. He'd moved to the floor, lying flat on the floor, holding the reports up in front of his face. If I had lain down, I'd have been asleep. Edward always did have a will of iron.

  He glanced at me. I got a glimpse of what he was looking at. He'd moved on to the pictures. Something must have shone on my face because he placed the pictures face down on his chest. "You finished?"

  "With the witness reports, yeah."

  He just looked at me.

  I went around the table and sat in the chair he'd started the night in. He stayed lying on the floor. I would have said like a contented cat, but there was something more reptilian about him than feline; a coldness. How could Donna miss it? I shook my head. Business, concentrate on business.

  "The majority of the houses are isolated ones, mostly because of the wealth of the owners. They've got enough money to give them land and privacy. But three of the houses were located in developments like the Bromwells' with neighbors all around. Those three attacks occurred on one of the few nights that all the neighbors were gone."

  "And?" he said.

  "And I thought this was going to be a brainstorming session. I want your ideas."

  He shook his head. "I brought you down here for a set of fresh eyes, Anita. If I tell you all our old ideas, it may lead you down the same wrong paths we've already taken. Tell me what you see."

  I frowned at him. What he said made sense, but it still felt like he was keeping secrets. I sighed. "If this was a person, I'd say he or they stake out the houses night after night, waiting for that one night when all the neighbors were out of the way. But do you know the odds of an entire street clearing out on any given night in the suburbs?"

  "Long odds," Edward said.

  I nodded. "Damn straight. A few people had plans for that night. One couple went to a niece's birthday party. Another family had their once a month dinner with the in-laws. Two couples from different crime scenes were both working late, but the rest of the people didn't have plans, Edward. They just all left home about the same time on the same night for different reasons."

  He was watching me, eyes blank, but steady, intense, and neutral at the same time. From his face I didn't know whether I was saying something he'd heard a dozen times before, or something brand new. Detective Sergeant Dolph Storr likes to stay neutral and not influence his people so I was kind of used to it, but Edward made Dolph seem positively loaded with influence.

  I continued, but it was like slogging through mud without any feedback at all. "The detective in charge of the second case, he noticed it, too. He went out of his way to ask why they left their houses. The answers are almost identical where the police take the time to ask details."

  "Go on," Edward said, face still blank.

  "Dammit, Edward. You've read all the reports. I'm just repeating what you already know."

  "But maybe you'll end up someplace new," he said. "Please, Anita, just finish your thought."

  "They all got restless. A spur of the moment trip to get ice cream with the kids. One woman decided to go grocery shopping at eleven o'clock at night. Some of them just got in their cars and went for a drive, no place in particular. Just had to get out for a while. One man described it as cabin fever.

  "A woman, Mrs. Emma ... shit. I've read too many names in too short a space of time."

  "Was it an unusual name?" Edward asked without a single change of expression.

  I frowned at him and leaned across the table, lying on it to reach the reports. I shuffled through them until I found the one I wanted. "Mrs. Emma Taylor said, 'The night just felt awful. I just couldn't stand being inside.' She goes on to say, 'Outside the air was suffocating, hard to breathe.' "

  "So?" he asked.

  "So I want to talk to her."

  "Why?"

  "I think she's a sensitive, if not a psychic."

  "There's nothing in the reports that say she's either."

  "If you have the gift and you ignore it or pretend it's not real, it doesn't go away. Power will out, Edward. If she's a strong sensitive or a psychic that has neglected her powers for years, then she'll be either depressed or manic. She'll have a history of treatment for mental illness. How serious will depend on how gifted she is."

  He finally looked interested. "You're saying that having psychic ability can drive you crazy?"

  "I'm saying that psychic ability can masquerade as mental illness. I know ghost hunters that hear the voices of the dead like whispers in their ears, one of the classic symptoms of psycophernia. Empaths, people who draw impressions from other people, can be depressed because they're surrounded by depressed people, and they don't know how to shield themselves. Really strong clairvoyants can spend their lives getting visions f
rom everything they touch, unable to turn it off, again seeing things that aren't there. Psycophernia. Demonic possession can mask itself as multiple personality. I could give you examples for the next hour matching mental illness with different types of power."

  "You've made your point," he said. He sat up and didn't seem the least bit stiff. Maybe the floor was good for his back. "I still don't understand why you want to talk to this woman. The report was taken by Detective Loggia. He was very thorough. He asked good questions."

  "You noticed that he took more time with why people left than the rest of the cops, just like I noticed it."

  Edward shrugged. "Loggia didn't like the way everyone cleared out. Too damn convenient, but he couldn't come up with anything that tied the people together into a conspiracy."

  "A conspiracy?" I almost laughed then stopped at the seriousness in his face. "Did someone actually suggest that an entire upper-middle-class to more-than-middle-class neighborhood conspired together to kill these people?"

  "It was the only logical explanation for why they all left within thirty minutes of each other on the night of the murders."

  "So they investigated all these people?" I asked.

  "That's where some of the extra paperwork comes from."

  "And?" I said.

  "Nothing," Edward said.

  "Nothing?" I made it a question.

  "A few neighborhood squabbles over kids destroying the flowers, one affair where the husband that turned up dead was banging the next door neighbor's wife." Edward grinned. "The neighbor was lucky that the other man got cut up in the middle of a string of serial killings. Otherwise, he'd have been the top of the hit parade."

  "Could it have been a copycat?" I asked.

  "The police don't think so, and believe me they tried to make the pieces fit."

  "I believe you. The police hate to let a good motive slide since most of the time motive isn't even one of their top priorities. Most people kill over stupid things, impulse, screw motive."

  "Do you have a logical reason why all these people would vacate their houses just at the right time for the killer, or killers, to make their move?"