Incriminating Evidence. Amanda Stevens

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СКАЧАТЬ but why hide them in a secret compartment if she hadn’t at least suspected the truth?

      Rolling to her side, Catherine fixated on the flicker of distant lightning out her window. The wind was picking up and she could hear the patter of rain on the roof. Her landlady was away visiting family and Catherine suddenly felt very alone and isolated, set back from the street as she was. Her apartment was on the second floor, nestled in a thick canopy of oak leaves. Most of the time, she enjoyed the illusion of living in the trees and the peace and quiet of being located off an alleyway rather than a busy street, but tonight the solitude seemed oppressive, the shadowy yard and side street menacing. Who knew what danger prowled the dark?

      She shifted to her other side, deliberately turning her back on the window, and fluffed her pillow. Insomnia had been a problem since childhood. Night terrors, too. Catherine had never understood her fear of the dark, but now she had to wonder if long-buried memories lurked somewhere in her subconscious. If she truly was Orson Lee Finch’s daughter, what horrors might she have witnessed as a child?

      The notion haunted her, so much so that when she finally drifted off, her sleep was filled with terrible visions of Finch’s deeds. She dreamed of his victims’ screams and of crimson magnolia petals raining down upon her. She awakened in a cold sweat, clinging to the covers as her gaze darted about her bedroom. Once her heart settled, she got up for a glass of water and then stood at her bedroom window peering out into the rainy night. Another image came to her—that of the man who had watched her from a recessed doorway. He had walked off when she called out to him, but Catherine couldn’t suppress the worry that he had been following her, that he might even now be out there with his eyes trained on her bedroom window.

      The dark and her nerves played tricks on her vision. She saw him everywhere—inside the back gate, hiding behind the azaleas, perched on her landlady’s back steps. The intermittent lighting revealed the truth. The shadows dissolved into nothingness. No one was out there. She was perfectly safe ensconced as she was behind locked doors and a latched gate.

      She went into the bathroom and took a melatonin tablet, determined to salvage what was left of the night. Then, shivering, she crawled back into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. Turning her mind away from Orson Lee Finch and his victims, she let her thoughts drift back to her meeting with Nick LaSalle.

      She remembered him well from their previous encounter. Skeletal remains had been discovered in a wooded park after a heavy rain and Nick had been the detective assigned to the investigation. He’d come to Catherine for help in establishing a biological profile of the victim. Their consultation had been brief, but he’d made an impression. Tall and lean with dark hair and gray eyes the color of a rain cloud.

      He’d struck her as professional and methodical with flashes of intuition that had surprised her. She’d been unexpectedly drawn to him and had been disappointed when he hadn’t made further contact. Perhaps the attraction had been one-sided. Or perhaps other things had occupied his time. She vaguely recalled something unpleasant about his departure from the police department. She searched her mind for the details, but drowsiness clouded her memory and anyway, she’d never put much stock in rumors.

      She drifted in and out of sleep, aware of her surroundings on some level even as she started to dream. She was in her bedroom, safely tucked beneath the covers. If she opened her eyes, she knew that she would see all her familiar possessions. The refinished dresser that had belonged to her mother, the vase of blue hydrangeas on her nightstand that she’d picked from her landlady’s garden.

      And yet the room that flitted at the edge of her consciousness was very different. Tiny and dim with pictures cut from a storybook taped to a drab wall. She could hear a man’s voice, distant and angry, and a woman softly pleading. The sound frightened Catherine. She tried to rouse herself, but sleep tugged her deeper. The tinkle of a music box muted the voices and lulled her senses. She floated on those melancholy notes until her eyes fluttered open and she waited for the music to stop.

      Fully awake, she bolted upright in bed. She could still hear a distant tinkle. She tried to convince herself that her landlady had returned. The older woman suffered hearing loss so perhaps she’d turned up the volume on her TV or radio. But the house was too far away and noise had never been a factor in the two years Catherine had lived in the apartment.

      She clutched the covers to her chest, paralyzed with fear, though she couldn’t say why exactly. The sound of a music box was hardly threatening, and yet dread clawed at her spine as she swung her legs over the side of the bed.

      Barefoot and trembling, she crossed the bedroom and peered down the narrow hallway toward the living area. Nothing moved. She reached for the light switch but checked herself. She knew her way around the apartment with her eyes closed. If someone had broken in, the dark would give her an advantage.

      Retreating back into the bedroom, she grabbed a baseball bat from the closet and then returned to the hallway, easing her way to the front of the apartment where she stood in the dark as the haunting melody washed over her.

      The music box wasn’t in her apartment, she realized. The notes drifted through her front door. Inching her way along the wall, she peeled back the curtain to peer out into the wet night. A set of wooden stairs led from the garden up to a tiny covered porch dimly lit by sconces on either side of her front door. An old-fashioned swing hung from a tree limb at the bottom of the steps. The chains squeaked ominously in the breeze, and for a moment, Catherine imagined someone sitting there staring up at her.

      No one was there. But someone had just been there. The music box was only now winding down.

      Gripping the handle of the bat, Catherine unlocked the dead bolt and pulled back the door.

      She didn’t see anything at first, but then her gaze dropped. The music box had been shoved up against the wall, protected from the rain by the porch roof. As the notes faded, the tiny ballerina froze in a suspended pirouette.

      Catherine knelt to examine the box even as her gaze scanned the night. Someone had been on her porch moments earlier. They’d wound the spring and left the music box for her to find. But why?

      Rising, she walked to the edge of the steps and stared down into the soggy garden.

      “I know you’re out there,” she whispered. “Who are you? What do you want?”

      The breeze blew through her hair and the rain dampened her nightgown. It almost seemed to Catherine that she could feel the cool caress of her mother’s hand against her cheek. But Laura March hadn’t left the music box on Catherine’s porch nor had she followed her to LaSalle Investigations that afternoon.

      Someone very much alive knew who she was. And they were trying to make contact.

       Chapter Three

      The oak trees were still dripping the next morning as Nick let himself in the gate and made his way along the flagstone pathway to Catherine’s apartment. The rain had slackened sometime before dawn but the weather forecast called for more thunderstorms in the afternoon.

      The gloom wore on Nick’s mood, but the unexpected phone call from Catherine had given him a lift. He hadn’t planned on contacting her until he heard back from Finch’s attorney. If that source didn’t pan out, he’d have to figure another way to get a visitor’s permit for the Twilight Killer. He could always find a work-around, but first things first.

      Pausing at the bottom of the outdoor staircase, he scoped out his surroundings. The garden was СКАЧАТЬ