Dead By Morning

Chapter 8

Cyrene woke with the worst headache of her life. She came to slowly, painfully, her eyelids flicking. Moaning as she stretched her neck, she tried to focus on the mundane task of keeping her eyes open. When she parted her lips, she realized that her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth and her throat felt parched. She remembered drinking a glass of wine with Errol last night after they had made love and showered together. Surely, she hadn’t gotten drunk on a single glass. Had she drunk more than she thought she had?

“Errol . . .” She forced her eyes wide open, stared up at the unmoving ceiling fan and spread her arm across the bed, searching for her husband.

Dim early morning sunlight reflecting off the patio pool danced in waving patterns on the ceiling.

Ah, another day in paradise.

She ran her fingertips across the sheet and found that she was alone in the bed. Apparently Errol was already awake and had gotten up. He was probably in the bathroom. She could hear running water, but it didn’t sound like the shower. Flipping over toward the side of the bed, she stretched her arms over her head, extended her legs and curved her feet backwards. When she rose from the bed, her bare feet encountered the cool tile floor.

Where are my house slippers?

Cyrene rounded the foot of the bed, intending to surprise Errol in the bathroom, but as she passed by his side of the bed, she caught a glimpse of something red on the sheets.

What in the world?

They hadn’t spilled any wine in the bed, had they?

She moved closer, getting a better look at the dark red stains on the snowy white sheets.

How odd. It looks like blood.

Instinct kicked in, a primeval sixth sense that warned of danger.

“Errol?” She backed away from the bed. “Errol . . . Errol . . .”

Flooded with a barrage of frightening thoughts, Cyrene shook her head in denial, refusing to believe, trying to convince herself that nothing was wrong.

“Errol, where are you?” Silence. “Please, honey, answer me.”

Silence.

As if her limbs were activated by some sort of remote control, her legs and feet moved, carrying her toward the bathroom. Gazing down as she walked, she noticed a smear of dried red liquid stretching from the bed to the bathroom.

Suddenly she went numb, unable to feel her hands and feet. The thunderous roar of her heartbeat threatened to deafen her. This wasn’t real. It wasn’t happening.

Standing in the bathroom door, she stared at the body lying on the floor beside the bathtub overflowing with water.

Errol? Oh my God, Errol.

His eyes were closed.

A thin red line marred the perfection of his smooth, clean-shaven neck and rivulets of dried blood descended from that red line like trinkets on a charm bracelet.

Cyrene stood perfectly still, her mind unable to process what she saw.

And then, in the quiet stillness of her honeymoon suite, Mrs. Errol Patterson screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

Maleah squared her shoulders and took a deep breath before entering the prison’s visitation area. She didn’t look back at Derek nor did she glance at the guard escorting her. After showering and dressing—khaki slacks and dark green tailored blouse—she had met Derek downstairs for breakfast. She had managed to down a cup of coffee and eat a few bites of blueberry muffin, hoping to quiet the tempest in her belly. Although she had done her best to assure her partner that she was not nervous and was ready for today’s meeting with Jerome Browning, she sensed that he knew she was simply putting up a good front. And that she was doing it as much for herself as for him.

If you can act as if you are self-assured and confident, then you’ve already won half the battle.

She remained standing as she waited for the guards to bring Browning from his cell. Thinking about what she was going to say and wondering how he would respond, she heard rather than saw Browning enter the visitation area. When she looked directly at him, he stared back at her, that weirdly pleasant and completely unnerving smile growing wider and wider as he drew closer.

The guards instructed him to sit. He sat.

“Good morning, Maleah. I hope you had a pleasant night. I certainly did.” He licked his lips. “I dreamed about you and woke this morning eager to see you again.”

Is that the best you’ve got? she wanted to say. A little sexual innuendo isn’t going to unnerve me in the least. Not when you’re in shackles and there are three armed guards in the room with us.

“I slept quite well, thank you,” she lied to him. “A restful, dreamless sleep.”

“I assume Mr. Lawrence also slept well. Any man sharing your bed would sleep well after . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence, but the implication was obvious.

Was he fishing to find out if she and Derek were lovers? Or was he merely hoping the comment would insult her? Either way, she had no intention of responding.

“We have an hour,” Maleah said as she sat across from Browning. “I think we’ve wasted enough time on meaningless, uninteresting chit-chat.”

“Is your love life meaningless and uninteresting?” His smile never wavered.

“Do you know why I’m here, Jerome? Why I’m wasting my valuable time even talking to someone like you?”

“Someone like me?” He laughed. “Someone handsome and brilliant and gifted. And if I may be so immodest, someone who has been told that he is a superlative lover.”

Egotistical, maniacal, psychopathic monster! “You are someone who has murdered fifteen people.” She paused before adding, “That we know of. You are someone who will spend the rest of his life slowly rotting away in prison.”

He lifted his bound hands, gesturing toward his heart. “You wound me with such harsh words.” His smile turned quickly to a frown, his expression one of mock sadness.

“Do you know why I’m here?” She repeated her initial question.

“All work and no play makes Maleah a dull girl.”

“You know why I’m here and what I want.”

He stretched as languidly as his restrained body could and glanced from the guard on his right to the guard on his left, both men standing several feet behind him. “What am I going to do with such a dull, dull visitor, gentlemen? All she wants to do is talk business.”

Maleah eased back from the edge of the seat and crossed her arms. “The warden has granted us an hour today, Jerome. But if you’re not in the mood to talk about what I want to talk about . . .” She uncrossed her arms, glanced at her wristwatch, tapped the glass face and said, “Five minutes. That’s as long as I’ll wait for you to tell me something that interests me.”

Browning remained silent for four minutes. The silence in the large, nearly empty room echoed with the sound of their quiet breathing. One guard cleared his throat. Another coughed a couple of times.

“You’re here because you think I might know who has mimicked my unique modus operandi almost perfectly and has recently killed four people.”

Finally.

“And do you know who he is?” she asked.

As if believing he now had the upper hand for the time being, he smiled and shrugged.

“All right,” she said. “You tell me what you want in exchange for answering my question.”

“Ah, Maleah, my sweet beauty, you’re very bright. You catch on quickly. Games are so much fun, don’t you think?”

“You’re wasting time,” she told him.

“All right. I’ll cut straight to the chase.” He chuckled. “I want to know what color panties you’re wearing.”

Good God! Without blinking an eye, she said, “Beige. With lace trim.”

He closed his eyes, licked his lips as if savoring a delicious morsel and sighed with a sickening sound of satisfaction.

“I assume the copycat killer is an admirer,” Jerome said. “I assume he has studied my work. Perhaps, he’s even communicated with me.”

“Has he?”

“That’s another question that requires payment.”

Damn you, Browning.

“You haven’t answered the first question yet. Not to my satisfaction.” She looked him in the eye.

“I don’t know who the copycat killer is,” he said, and then hurriedly added, “Not exactly, but . . .”

“But what?”

“There are things I do know. Things that can help you find him.”

“Why should I believe you?”

He grinned.

“Even if you answer every question I ask, how would I know whether or not you were lying to me?” she asked.

“You’d have to take me on faith. But if you do that, I can promise you that in time, you’ll discover everything I tell you is true.”

“Okay, let’s say I take you on faith. But first, you’ll have to give me something right now, something to prove to me that I can believe you.”

“He’s going to kill again soon, if he hasn’t already.”

She snorted. “That’s it? Sorry, Jerome, but you’re going to have to do better than that.”

“I’ll tell you something about the next person he’s going to kill, if you’ll tell me something I’d love to know.”

“My bra matches my panties,” she said glibly.

“That information paints such an erotic picture in my mind,” he told her. “But that wasn’t my question.”

“Then what is it?”

As nonchalantly as if he were asking her about her favorite flavor of ice cream, he asked, “Was he your first?”

She stared at him, puzzled by his question.

“Noah Laborde,” Browning said. “Was he your first lover?”

She should have been prepared for this, but she wasn’t. Damn it. She wasn’t.

“You do remember Noah, don’t you? Good-looking young man, fresh out of college. Quite an up-andcomer in the Atlanta business world about twelve years ago.”

Get hold of yourself, Maleah. He’s trying to rattle you. Don’t let him get away with it. Show him what you’re made of.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I remember Noah Laborde. And yes, he was my first lover.”

Browning smiled as if he thought he had won a great victory. He hadn’t. But she had. He just didn’t know it yet.

“He’s going to begin varying the sex of his victims. You won’t know from one kill to the next if he will choose a man or a woman.”

“We learned that from your files, so we assumed if he followed your lead, he wouldn’t stick with two female kills followed by two males.”

“Looks like you’re a step ahead of me.”

“Tell me something else, something I don’t already know.”

“Why should I? It’s not my fault that I told you something you already knew.”

“Ah, come on, Jerome. Fair’s fair.”

“You surprise me.”

“Do I?”

“I believe I may have underestimated you, sweet Maleah.”

“If you have, you wouldn’t be the first.” She stood up and glared down at him. “Pay your debt. Give me some information that I can use. If not, when I walk out of here today, I won’t be back.”

“You could be bluffing.”

“Only one way to find out—call my bluff.”

She turned around and walked toward the exit door, her escort following. Just as he unlocked the door and opened it, Browning called out to her.

“You’ll be back. You won’t be able to stay away.”

She paused for half a second and then started through the door.

“The next victim won’t be brown-eyed,” he told her.

She kept walking without responding in any way. Keeping in step with her guard escort, she followed him back to the warden’s office where Derek was waiting.

Derek took one look at her and knew the session with Browning had rattled her. But he also knew that she was okay. He could see the steely determination in her eyes and the stiffness in her spine. Whatever had transpired between her and Jerome, she had come through the battle with nothing more than a minor flesh wound.

She acknowledged his presence with a glance, then marched straight to the warden. “I won’t be back tomorrow.”

“Then you’re finished with—?” the warden said.

“No, I’m not finished with Mr. Browning. Not by a long shot. But he needs to think that I am.”

Warden Holland nodded. “I will need twenty-four hours’ notice before your next visit.”

She shook his hand, said thanks, and motioned to Derek that she was ready to leave. He tried to talk to her, but she told him flat out that she was in no mood for conversation.

“Not now. We can talk on the way back to Vidalia.”

And so he waited, giving her the time she needed to decompress after game playing with a cunning madman.

When they reached the designated parking area, she said, “You drive.” And then she tossed him her keys. He grabbed the keys mid-air, remotely unlocked the SUV and, gentleman that he was, opened the passenger door for her.

And then he waited until they were several miles from the penitentiary before he said, “The warden is going to have a list of all of Browning’s visitors for the past year, along with the names and addresses of the people who have written to him and the names and phone numbers of the people he’s called compiled and sent to me and to Powell headquarters as an e-mail attachment. He’s promised we’ll have the information by the end of the day.”

“Great. We’ve finally got something to work with, don’t we?”

“Yep.” When she didn’t continue their conversation, he asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?”

“We’ll have to talk about your interview with Browning. I’ll need to know what he said, everything you can remember.”

Maleah adjusted her seat so that she could lean further back. She rested her head on the cushioned leather and folded her hands together in her lap.

“He asked what color my panties were and I told him beige with lace trim and that I was wearing a matching bra.”

“Son of a bitch.” Derek growled the comment under his breath.

“He still didn’t give me the copycat killer’s name or a description of him. But he did say that he knew things about this guy that could help us find him.”

“Did you believe him?”

“I didn’t disbelieve him.”

“He’s playing you. He may not know a damn thing.”

“He said if the copycat follows the Carver’s MO, he’ll alter the sex of his victims pretty much willy-nilly.”

“Something we already knew.”

“We didn’t know that his next victim wouldn’t have brown eyes.”

“What?”

“He called out to me just as I was leaving. He said the next victim wouldn’t be brown-eyed.”

“How could he possibly know that?” Derek suspected that Browning wouldn’t say something like that off the top of his head. If he wanted Maleah to come back to see him, he would try to impress her with his knowledge.

“I have no idea, but maybe we should check and see what color the first four victims’ eyes were. Maybe there’s a pattern.”

“We’ll contact the agency—”

Derek’s phone rang. No music. Just a strong, routine ring tone.

With one hand on the wheel and his eyes fixed on the road ahead, he pulled the phone from his pocket, hit the On button and said, “Derek Lawrence speaking,” without checking caller ID.

“I want you and Maleah at the Vidalia Municipal Airport as soon as you can get there,” Griff Powell said. “There’s a charter plane waiting to fly y’all to Atlanta. Nic and I will be taking off in the Powell jet within the next thirty minutes. We’ll pick y’all up in Atlanta. We’re flying from there straight to Nassau. The copycat struck again last night. He killed Errol Patterson. Errol’s wife found his body in the bathroom of their hotel suite. She’s under a doctor’s care at the moment and heavily sedated. She’s going to need all the help we can give her.”

“We’ll pick up our bags at the hotel and drive straight to the airport.”

Succinct and to the point. Conversation ended.

“What’s happened?” Maleah asked.

“The copycat killed Errol Patterson last night and his wife . . . his new bride . . . found his body this morning.”