Deeper Than the Dead

53

At 3:23 in the morning Jane sat bolt upright in bed, awakened from an exhausted, restless sleep by an unearthly, blood-curdling howl. For an instant, she thought her heart would explode, it was pounding so hard, so fast.

Violet, her pug, launched herself off the bed and ran barking from the room.

Jane got up, grabbing the Lady Smith & Wesson from her night-stand. She had left every light in the house on every night since Lisa’s body had been found. Her outdoor lights blazed bright. A county cruiser prowled past every hour. And still she kept the gun handy.

Petal and Violet were both at the back door, barking incessantly, Petal jumping up and hurling herself at the door again and again in a vain attempt to break out.

“Girls! Girls, calm down,” Jane said, setting her gun on the washing machine.

She caught hold of Petal’s collar and nearly had her arm pulled out of the socket as she tried for three seconds to restrain the pit bull. The dog was like a torpedo of solid muscle.

“Calm down, sweetheart!” Jane shouted, her ridiculous words falling on small deaf ears.

Petal lunged at the door again and again, snapping, fangs bared, ready to tear to pieces whatever—or whoever—was outside.

Jane stood back, shaken by the dog’s ferocity. She looked out the window above the washing machine, seeing nothing in the arc of lighted lawn. Taking her gun with her, she went into the kitchen, cut the light, and went to the window above the sink. She opened the window and strained to listen, hearing only the barking of the two dogs in the laundry room at first. Then came an eerie accompaniment in the distance: Coyotes yipping wildly down in the arroyo behind her property, celebrating the death of some unfortunate creature.

She hated that sound. It was not the semiromantic howl of the wild people most often associated with the animals. It was a frenzied, hysterical cacophony of voices that preceded prey being ripped apart and devoured by the pack. It made the hair stand up on the back of her neck and ran goose bumps down her arms.

The dogs went wild to hear it, but Jane never allowed them outside at night off leash. Violet would have made a nice appetizer for a coyote. Even Petal wouldn’t have been a match for a pack of them. Bold and criminally clever, coyotes routinely lured dogs away from safety with one member of the pack dancing and bowing, inviting the dog to play, only to draw the dog into an ambush by the rest of its cohorts.

Breathing a sigh of some relief, she closed and locked the window and went back to bed, not to sleep, but to sit and fret and pretend to read. Violet joined her eventually, jumping on the bed to spin around like a tiny whirling dervish before settling in her spot to sleep. Petal remained at the back door, her barking gradually subsiding to a piteous whining.

Jane debated breaking down and calling Cal, deciding against it. The dogs were calming down. The coyote victory party had died down. Her doors and windows were locked. She had her gun. What did she need with a man?

Reassurance and strong arms around her.

Her relationship with Dixon had teetered off and on between friendship and something more for a long time, never entirely tipping one way or the other. Her choice. She chose not to push it over the edge tonight . . . again.

At some point exhaustion won the battle, and Jane fell asleep only to be tormented by dark dreams of captivity and torture at the hands of a madman. When the alarm went off, she was relieved to be dragged up out of that hell.

Still wearing the sweatshirt and leggings she had fallen asleep in, she got up and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face and brush her long hair back into a loose ponytail. Violet came to the doorway and began hopping up and down like a flea.

“I know, I know,” Jane said. “I’m coming.”

Dogs were the great levelers of life. It didn’t matter what had happened the day before. When the sun came up, the dogs would always need to go outside. Life would go on.

The doorbell rang as she walked through the house. She could see Steve Morgan through the glass in the front door. What a godsend he had been through this ordeal, taking some of the weight of managing the press off her.

They had agreed to meet early to go over everything that had gone on, every scrap of information that had come in to date on both Lisa’s murder and Karly’s disappearance, in preparation for a press conference set for nine.

“Hi, Steve,” she said, opening the door. “Come on in. I have to let the dogs out. Sorry.”

“No problem,” he said, following her back through the house. “I brought doughnuts. I figured we could both stand a big jolt of fat and sugar to start the day.”

“I’ll supply the coffee,” Jane said as they walked through the kitchen.

Petal was still sitting by the back door and had scratched the paint to shreds overnight. Both dogs flew out into the yard like a mismatched pair of rocks from slingshots, disappearing into the wilds of the garden.

Jane walked out onto the stone patio, crossing her arms over her I SLEEP WITH DOGS sweatshirt. The sun was barely up, and the air was cold. She glanced at Steve, taking in the dark circles under his eyes, the lines creased around his mouth.

“You look like you got about as much sleep as I did last night,” she said.

Somewhere at the back of the garden the dogs were going crazy, barking, howling, yelping.

“What in the world?” Jane asked, heading back toward the commotion. She grabbed a hoe away from the potting bench as she went. She glanced back over her shoulder. “If this is a snake, I’m calling on you.”

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

She took a right at the iceberg roses and stepped into a waking nightmare.

There, at the very back of the garden, planted among the calla lilies was Karly Vickers.