4th of July

Chapter 131

THE PHONE RANG, YANKING me out of a sleep so deep, I thought I was in Kansas. I fumbled around in the dark for the receiver.

“Who is this?” I croaked.

“It’s me, Lindsay. Sorry to call so early.”

“Joe.” I pulled the clock toward me; it read 5:15 in bright red numbers. I felt a jolt of alarm. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Everything’s fine with me,” he said, his voice calm, warming, sexy. “There’s a crowd outside your house, though.”

“You’re picking that up by GPS?”

“No, I just turned on the TV.”

“Hold on,” I said.

I stepped across the room and pulled up a corner of the window shade.

A couple of reporters had set up on the lawn, and camera crews were stringing cables out to satellite vans that curved around the road like Conestoga wagons.

“I see them now,” I said, getting back under the covers. “They’ve got me surrounded. Shit.”

I snuggled back down into the bedding and with the phone tucked between my face and my pillow, Joe felt so close, he could have been in the same time zone.

We talked for a good twenty minutes, made plans to get together when I got back to the city, and winged some kisses across the phone line. Then I got out of bed, threw on some clothes and a little makeup, and stepped outside Cat’s front door.

Reporters converged and pushed a posy of mikes up to my chin. I blinked in the morning light, saying only, “Sorry to disappoint you guys, but I can’t comment, you know. This is Chief Stark’s case, and you’ll have to talk to him. Th-th-that’s all, folks!”

I stepped back inside the house, smiled to myself, and closed the door on the fusillade of questions and the echoing sound of my name. I threw the bolt and turned off the phone’s ringer. I was taking down my crime notes from the kids’ corkboard when Cindy and Claire rang in with a conference call to my cell phone.

“It’s over,” I told them, repeating what the chief had said. “At least that’s what I’ve been told.”

“What’s really going on, Lindsay?” my intuitive, highly skeptical friend Cindy asked.

“Boy, you’re smart.”

“Uh-huh. So what’s the deal?”

“Off the record. The kid’s really proud of himself for getting into the psycho-killer hall of fame. And I’m not sure he’s totally earned it.”

“Did he confess to the John Doe killing?” Claire asked.

“There you go, Butterfly,” I said. “Another smarty.”

“Well?”

“No, he did not.”

“So where do you come out?”

“I don’t know what to believe, Claire. I really thought whoever killed these people also killed John Doe. Maybe I was wrong.”