Страница 73 из 95
Nick released his hold on Jamie and wiped his hands on his pants. “Just leave Melanie and me alone.”
Nick backed away from Jamie as Jamie’s unwitting supporters closed in around him, asking him if he was okay.
Nick turned his back on them and walked away.
“Ask her about the others, Nick,” Jamie called out after him. “Miles Talbot wasn’t an isolated incident.”
Nick lay in Melanie’s bed. A sheen of sweat glistened on his chest. He’d made love to Melanie like it was the last time. It left them breathless, but for totally different reasons. He couldn’t get Jamie’s parting remark out of his head. What had he meant? He’d killed for Melanie before? How many times? Two? Five? A dozen? How did anyone get away with that many murders and how did Melanie cope? She’d have to think she was some sort of kiss of death with a trail of dead boyfriends left in her wake. That was if she even knew they were dead. Melanie said her boyfriends had run out on her, not died on her. Christ, he should go to the cops, but with what? He needed something concrete to give them. If he went to them half-cocked, he’d achieve nothing beyond alienating Melanie and blowing any kind of future with her.
“Wow, don’t look too depressed.” Melanie returned to the bedroom with a glass of water in her hand. She slipped between the sheets and pressed her naked body up against his. She offered him the glass and he sat up and took it. “You can’t be sad after all that.”
“No.” He sipped the water. “I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Stuff.”
She pinched his arm playfully. “Come on, spit it out. What’s eating you?”
“I was wondering how important I was to you.”
“Very.”
“Really?”
She took the glass from his hand and placed it on the nightstand. She took his face in her hands and stared directly at him. Her eyes shone with a brightness that blinded him. “At this very moment in space and time, you are the most important person to me.”
“At this very moment.”
She smiled. “Yes. What’s all this about? Are you feeling insecure?”
“I feel I know you and at the same time, I don’t.” This wasn’t a line. He really did feel this way. He hadn’t realized how much he felt this until Jamie came on the scene.
Concern clouded her expression, but the remark pushed her away from him. She retreated to her side of the bed. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything.” He took her hand in his. “Everything.”
A single tear leaked from her right eye. “What do you want to know?”
They held each other for a time, not saying anything. Then she told him to get up. He showered and when he returned to the bedroom, she wasn’t there. He found her in the living room surrounded by boxes.
“What’s going on?”
“Get dressed and I’ll tell you my life story.”
The boxes contained photo albums dating back to her baby years. She introduced him to two-dimensional images of family and friends, past and present. It didn’t matter which photos she showed him, Jamie was always there, lurking in the corners, glued to her heels like an unwanted shadow.
“Who’s that?” Nick pointed to a good-looking boy no more than twelve dressed in a Miami Vice sport jacket over a pastel T-shirt and white pants. Melanie was at his side. The photo had captured some sort of school dance. It was the first picture that failed to feature Jamie.
Melanie flushed and turned the page.
“No secrets.” Nick turned the page back. He tapped the boy’s image with his index finger. “A first love, perhaps?”
“Yes,” she conceded. “His name was Mikey Pryce. We went steady for six months.” She slapped a hand over her face. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
“So how did Mikey break your heart?”
She pulled back from him. The temperature in the room plunged. “He died.”
Nick’s stomach clenched as a sense of foreboding overcame him. He forced out a single word. “How?”
“Drowned during a family vacation.”
Nick turned the pages. He pointed out something that lightened her mood, then steered her to a picture of another boyfriend. This sparked a long conversation about the boyfriends and girlfriends they’d both had. He pumped her for everything he could get-names, places, dates. His mind was on fire. He committed every detail to memory. Ask him to do this at any other time and he’d have never managed the feat, but tonight it was all about saving his life and every nugget of data was stored. There’d been seven great loves in Melanie’s life, including Mikey Pryce and Miles Talbot. Each of these guys had skipped out on her. She didn’t make it clear whether they’d all been killed, but they’d all broken things off abruptly.
“All my boyfriends have a habit of walking out on me one way or another.” She turned the page on Miles Talbot.
Nick took the album from her. “I won’t. You have my word on it.”
Seven people. It didn’t seem like a lot of people, but digging up seven life stories consumed time like Nick wouldn’t have believed. He possessed a newfound respect for the police. It took hours just to come up with one single facet of someone’s life. But Nick persevered. If he was going to serve Jamie up to the cops, this was how it would happen.
He used every spare moment researching Melanie’s old boyfriends. This came at the expense of Melanie. He saw her twice a week if he was lucky. She complained, but he blamed a big project at work for his absence. On the plus side, Jamie stopped pestering him. If he was daring Nick to learn the truth, it looked as if he’d get his wish.
Nick’s first break came with Mikey Pryce. He found a newspaper story detailing that the boy had drowned at a watering hole in Sacramento where the Sacto and American Rivers met. The competing currents had swept him away. Melanie had neglected to mention that she and Jamie were there, too. Jamie had provided the eyewitness account to the police. Was he just thirteen when he’d committed his first murder?
Looking for a pattern, Nick tracked down Melanie’s high school boyfriend, Trent Barber. Unlike Mikey Pryce, Trent was alive and well. He hadn’t strayed far from his Orange County roots. He was a sound engineer for the movies. Nick used the movie angle to get Trent to speak to him on the phone, but Nick soon found he was out of his depth when the movie talk got technical.
“I hear we have a mutual friend,” Nick said.
“In this business you need friends. Who is it?”
“Melanie Lassen.”
“Who are you?” The question came through gritted teeth.
Nick saw no point in lying. “Melanie’s boyfriend.”
“So what are you doing-checking up on her?”
“Yeah.”
“If you want to know about STDs, ask for a blood test.”
“I’m more interested in her brother, Jamie.”
Nick got the feeling Trent was about to hang up but the mention of Jamie stopped him. Trent ’s tone changed from anger to concern.
“So, he’s given you the speech.”
“What speech?”
“Don’t piss around. You wouldn’t be tracking down her high school sweetheart unless he’d given you the no-one-is-good-enough-for-my-sister speech.”
“And what did you do about it?”
“I blew the freak off. What do you think?”
“I think he convinced you to stop seeing his sister.”
Trent went silent for a good minute before speaking again.
“I was a good tight end in school. Could have gotten a scholarship.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Jamie broke my hand with a hammer. Happy? Now, would you mind doing me a favor and go to hell?”
Nick received similar accounts from Jonathon Tripp and Tommy Frist, both college boyfriends. Both took Jamie’s hints before bodily harm was involved. Matthew Warner wasn’t so lucky. He was an intern at a San Francisco architecture firm when he dated Melanie. They’d gotten real close, according to Warner’s sister, Pe