The door to Jackie’s apartment swung open, and Laurel stepped in, plastic shopping bags dangling from her hands.
Jackie looked away from the oversize corkboard mounted on her living room wall where all the pictures Hauser had found were tacked up with multicolored push-pins. “What’s that? You cooking us dinner?”
“It’s stuff for your pathetic excuse of a kitchen,” she said. “You can’t live off day-old Chinese food, you know.”
“Why not? I like Chinese food.” Grocery shopping rarely ever made it on the to-do list.
Laurel shook her head. “You’re an embarrassment to independent women everywhere. College dorm rooms are better stocked.”
“Peh!” Jackie waved her off. “Coffee, wine, and chicken fried rice. What more could a girl need?”
“Oh, how about some fruit? Vegetables? Maybe a little dairy once in a while?”
“There are veggies in the rice, and I get milk in every latte.”
Laurel put the bags down on the counter and began to unload the food. “Your body is going to hate you. You can’t catch bad guys on such a shitty diet.”
“Hasn’t been a problem so far,” Jackie said with a smile. “Besides, you bring all that healthy crap over a couple times a month, so it’s all good.”
“Only if you eat it.”
She shrugged and looked back to the board. “I eat some of it.”
“Uh-huh,” Laurel replied. “So, your nutrient-deprived brain figure out anything new for us to work with?
“Not really.” Jackie sighed and put her hands on her hips. “Other than being completely weirded out by the whole prospect of dealing with someone who drinks blood to stay alive, I haven’t figured out anything. Nothing that makes sense anyway. I’d like a motive that doesn’t involve a century-long serial-murder spree by the undead, and I’m just not finding one.”
Laurel wrinkled her nose at a Chinese food carton as she dropped it in the garbage. “You ruling out the penny?”
“No. I don’t know. We tracked Anderson and Fontaine around a four-square-mile area north of downtown all afternoon and got nothing. They didn’t stop to talk to anyone. Anderson’s phone calls were to Ms. Fontaine and work. That’s it.”
“He could figure we’re baiting him.”
“Or even if the penny is relevant to the case, it has nothing to do with what is motivating our killer.” Jackie tapped at the sequence of pictures detailing the murders. “It’s in these murders somewhere. We don’t have every last detail on them, but our intel indicates we’ve had someone killing off a group of five people every thirty-six years since Anderson’s family was killed.”
“This would make the fifth time it’s happened, too.” Laurel began to rinse off a tomato and bell pepper in the sink. “The numbers are significant.”
Jackie stared at the old picture of Nick and his family, the classic sheriff’s star pinned to the breast of his shirt. “Maybe he just snapped when his family died and has been reliving the murders over and over again.”
“And only do it every thirty-six years?” Laurel chopped the vegetables on a cutting board. “That is some serious self-restraint for someone who’s snapped.”
“Yeah, I know. Very atypical pattern,” Jackie said, “but a pattern nonetheless. If this holds to form, we should have another victim very soon. Could be another child.”
“We don’t have enough to bring him in.”
“Fuck, I’m not even sure it is him. The vibe is all wrong.” Jackie stepped away and sat down on the piano bench. “Or maybe he’s just snowing us. I can’t get a read on him at all.”
“He’s one hundred seventy-six years old,” Laurel said. “He’s had a lot of practice. You want blue cheese or Italian?”
“What?”
“Dressing. What kind of dressing you want?”
“God. You made us salad?”
Laurel laughed. “Shut up. It’s your monthly intake of vegetables.”
“It’s lame is what it is. Blue cheese.” Jackie took the bowl of salad without further complaint, however, and set it on top of the piano. Laurel set hers there as well and remained standing, looking across to the picture-strewn board. “We need another angle.”
“Who killed Anderson’s family?”
“No info there,” Jackie said. “Hadn’t been caught when the article was written.”
Laurel chewed thoughtfully on a chunk of tomato. “So, you think Anderson quit being a sheriff to go after whomever it was?”
“That would be my guess.” Jackie gave in and picked up the salad, forking in a blue-cheese-slathered chunk of lettuce. “I would.”
“Okay, what if he still is?”
“Still?” She looked at the board, trying to figure what Laurel might be seeing. “Chasing a ghost? Can ghosts murder people?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Laurel said. “I was thinking more like-”
“Split personality!” Jackie stood up and pointed at Nick with her fork. “He kills them as Jekyll and then tries to catch the family killer with Hyde.”
“Actually,” Laurel said, nodding, “that might work. Psychotic break when his family was murdered, can’t find the killer, so makes it up himself in order to get revenge. Need evidence from him at a crime scene to have a shot at that one though.”
“Need to prove that penny was his somehow.”
“Which will be a bit difficult, given it was stolen,” Laurel added.
“By a ghost that you felt out at his office.”
“And we’ll prove this how?”
Jackie threw up her hands. “How the fuck would I know? You’re the ghost person, Laur. How do we deal with ghosts?”
She shrugged. “You don’t deal with them. You’re lucky if you can interact with them at all.”
“Well, that helps.” Jackie sat back down. “Maybe the ghost gave it back to Anderson?”
“Maybe,” Laurel agreed. “We can’t get a search warrant based on that though. You know no judge will accept anything supernatural. We need something concrete to link that penny to him.”
“Yeah, yeah. Technicalities.”
Laurel chuckled. “Don’t even think about going to look. Anderson won’t let you.”
“He will if he doesn’t have it or knows we won’t find it.”
“Hmmm. Does the Hyde know what the Jekyll is doing?”
“I know, it’s a stretch.” Jackie shook her head in frustration and dug back into the salad.
“Not so much. It’s a wild theory, but it works if things fall into place.”
“I prefer not to wait for someone else to die in order to find out.”
“All we can do is watch him and wait, Jackie. If he makes a move, we’ll be there.”
“And if we’re wrong, another child might be dead.”
“I know,” Laurel said. “We can only work with what we have, and we don’t have enough.”
Jackie slapped her hand down on the piano keys, creating a harsh jangle of notes. “Then we need to find it. What the hell are we missing? I’ll bet it’s right here in front of us.”
“We’ll find it. We always do.” Laurel laid a hand down on the keys by Jackie’s. “Play something. It always helps you think.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“Okay, then eat the salad. You’ve eaten crap all day.”
Jackie straightened up and laid her hands upon the keys. “You’re a pain in the ass. Any requests?”
“Nope,” Laurel said. “Just something soothing.”
Jackie flexed her fingers, popping a couple knuckles, and thought for a moment on her choice. She played for no one, except on occasion for Laurel when she insisted. Everyone else brought out the nerves, and the embarrassment of screwing up was so not worth it.
The notes for Brahms’s Lullaby rose out of the Steinway like a soft breeze, drifting with ease around the room. Laurel smiled and closed her eyes, elbows resting on top of the piano, her chin in her hands. Jackie’s teacher had told her she had a very light touch upon the keys-“quiet grace,” she had called it. At the time, Jackie had not cared. Learning to play had been the important thing, carrying out her mother’s wish to have her learn. The song was one of Laurel’s favorites and not overly complicated to play, so it was often a choice when she was over. On more than one occasion it had put her to sleep.
Frustration melted away while Jackie’s fingers roamed over the keys. Her head cleared, but no revelations were forthcoming. The missing piece still lay out there in the ether somewhere.
Laurel sighed when the last of the notes faded away to silence. “I love you when you play-I mean, it-I love it when you play. Sorry, Freudian slip there.” She gave her a sheepish smile.
Jackie smiled back, utterly unsure of what to say. The words, the thought, had been lingering in the back of her mind since Laurel had admitted her sexuality. Jackie had conveniently stashed the thought back into the recesses of her brain, but now here it was, front and center.
“I know what you meant,” she said. “You’re my one and only fan.” Did that come out right? No. It didn’t sound right at all. “What I meant was… uh… I meant…”
Laurel stood up straight and laughed. “Sorry. Awkward moment. I know it’s something that needed to be said at some point, but this isn’t exactly what I’d been thinking. It’s just been on my mind a lot since yesterday, and I wanted to get it out there and… you know, clear the air. I don’t want it to make things weird between us.”
Jackie shook her head. “No weirdness. I’m fine with it, Laur. Really. You’re my best friend and partner. You’ve saved my butt more times than I can remember. So how could I not be fine with practically anything you do or say?”
She wrung her hands together. “I know. It’s just this is kinda different.” Her shoulders slumped and her face flushed. “I didn’t want you worrying I’d try to stick my tongue down your throat or something.”
“Laur!” Jackie had finally managed to get it out of her head from before, and now it was back. “I’m truly not worried about you doing that. Really.”
“Sorry. Sorry! Shit.” Her hands covered her mouth in shock. “I didn’t mean to. I take it back. Pretend I never said it.”
Jackie rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Not going to happen. Look, can we just shelve this for now? Please? I know this is, um, not how it’s supposed to work. I get that. Maybe it’ll change things, and maybe it won’t, but not now. We’ve got a case to figure out, and it’ll never happen with this stuff hovering around us. If there’s more you want to talk about, we will. I promise. Okay?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
Jackie sighed. Please just let this go for now. “All good, right?”
She nodded again. “Right.”
Jackie’s phone buzzed on top of the piano. Where had that call been two minutes ago? She picked it up. “Rutledge.”
“Hey, Jack, it’s Gamble. I’m going home. Peterson is taking over for me out here at Anderson’s, but I think he’s done for the night. Last I checked, he was sitting by his fireplace reading a book.”
“Figured as much,” she said. “Anything with Fontaine?”
“Um, no, but we lost track of her an hour or so ago and haven’t picked her back up yet. Apparently, she used to race motorcycles, and nobody can keep up with her.”
“Great. Thanks. Have them check in if anything comes up.”
“Will do,” he replied. “Anything on your end?”
“Besides huge amounts of frustration and lack of evidence? No.”
“Ouch. Sorry. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Later.” Jackie clicked off and set the phone down. “Back to the board. Let’s go through it all again.”
Laurel walked around to the wall. “Did I hear him say Ms. Fontaine raced motorcycles?”
“Yeah, and I’ll bet she can swing from branches with her whip and call upon the feline forces of Chicago to assist her.”
Laurel made an amused “mmm” sound, which Jackie wisely chose to ignore. “Let’s just focus on dead people and vampires for now. Much safer topics.”