BRIDGER'S LAST STAND Read online

  "It's important, Frannie," Bridger said softly.

  She closed her eyes and tried to remember. "She was pretty. Tall and skinny, like a model. She was wearing a tight royal blue dress and matching high heels, like maybe she was just coming in after a long night out." Frannie opened her eyes and stared at Bridger. While she'd been sitting here with her eyes closed he'd removed his dark glasses, and she found herself looking into his all-knowing deep brown eyes.

  "Hair," he prompted curtly.

  "Medium," she said, doing her best to remember. "Light brown or dark blond, maybe shoulder length, maybe longer."

  Dixon and Bridger exchanged a cryptic glance.

  "You guys want to tell me what's going on here?" A hint of hysteria rose within her. She had a sudden feeling that something very wrong had taken place in that old hotel. "What kind of incident was this?"

  "When you collided," Bridger said, ignoring her question, "what did she say?"

  "She apologized and so did I, and then she asked me who did my hair."

  "And you told her?"

  "Sure. Why not?" Frannie took a deep breath and continued. "She said it was 'very cool,' and then she asked for my name so she could tell Darlene what kind of cut she wanted."

  Dixon furiously scribbled notes, and Bridger stared at her, an odd expression on his stern face. "Anything else?"

  Mal watched Frannie's face as she remembered what had happened. She was the perfect witness—clearheaded, specific, thoughtful. And all he could think of was how close she'd come to the killer. How she'd put herself in danger by taking the stairs. He wanted to cross the room and put his arms around her. Dammit, she'd given him the scare of his life, and she didn't even know it.

  "No."

  "Was she carrying anything? A handbag, a suitcase, anything at all."

  "No … oh, wait. She had a small purse that matched her dress. A blue shoulder bag." Frannie grew more and more intrigued as the moments and the questions passed. He could see the curiosity in eyes that were boring into him. "What happened? Did she do something?"

  "She was—"

  "Hold on, Mal," Harry said, a hint of warning in his voice. Then he turned to Frannie. "Miss Vaughn, we'd like you to take a look at—"

  "No." Mal placed his half-empty mug on the cluttered table by the sofa, amidst a number of ceramic angels. One or two of the figurines were perfect, but most were damaged. One had a chipped wing, and another had only half a halo. "It's not necessary." He didn't want Frannie to be forced to view what was left of the leggy blonde she'd passed on the stairs. It was hard enough for him, but for her it would be a moment she'd never forget, the kind of memory nightmares were made of. He could spare her that.

  "The heck it's not," Harry seethed.

  "A photograph," Mal conceded.

  "Would someone please—" Frannie stood.

  "It would be best if she came down to the—" Harry began.

  "No," Mal said forcefully.

  "We can't mollycoddle a witness just because you…"

  Suddenly the room was filled with bright sunlight, and Mal covered his eyes instinctively, protectively. The headache he'd forgotten about came roaring back with a vengeance. When he peeked between two fingers he saw Frannie standing before the picture window, blinds raised to let the sunlight come blazing through. If not for the shade tree in her front yard, he'd probably be prostrate on Frannie Vaughn's floor right now.

  "Would someone please tell me what's going on?" she demanded, hands on hips and eyes narrowed so that he knew she didn't like the bright light any more than he did. He hadn't seen her really angry before, not even last night as she'd talked about her lost job and her lousy ex-fiancé. But she was angry now.

  "Sure." He kept his voice low, as soothing as he could manage, given the circumstances. "A woman was murdered this morning in the stairwell of the Riverwatch Hotel. From what we can tell, she was killed about the time you left. The woman you ran into on your way down matches her description."

  It obviously wasn't what she was expecting to hear. Her eyes grew impossibly wide, and her knees shook slightly as she made her way back to the rocking chair.

  He was already sure it was the same woman, though Frannie would have to make a positive ID. When it came to murder, nothing, not a single detail, was taken for granted.

  Frannie had passed the handyman on the fourth floor, placing him close to the scene at the right time, but a case was rarely that simple. He had to ask. "Was there anyone in the lobby as you left? The clerk, maybe a customer checking out … anyone at all?"

  She nodded slowly. "The desk clerk wasn't there, but there was a man standing by the elevator."

  Her memory of the victim had been clear, her description perfect. Could they be so lucky? He pressed for more. "Describe him for me, Frannie."

  She bit her lower lip while she contemplated. "He was kind of young, I think. I mean, not too old. His hair was dark. Brown, not black. Medium build … that's all I can remember."

  It wasn't enough. "What was he wearing?"

  "I don't remember," she whispered.

  "Can you recall anything memorable about his face?"

  She shook her head. "His back was to me, and I really didn't take a good look. If he'd run into me like she did, I'd remember, I swear I would."

  Big blue eyes lifted to him, and Mal saw something there he didn't like. Fear. Uncertainty. Even worse, there was a plea in her eyes, and it was directed to him and him alone. It went deeper than last night's shared need, much too deep for his comfort.

  "He scratched his neck," she said softly, raising her own hand to the back of her neck. "I don't guess that's any help."

  Frannie had come very close to a killer and she knew it. How long after she'd left the stairwell had he struck? Minutes? Seconds? How close had he been? Whether it was Loudermilk on the fourth floor, or the man by the elevator, or someone else, she'd been too damn close. Right now she was scared and, dammit, he was scared for her.

  As much as he wanted to, he couldn't comfort her, couldn't take away the fear. All he could do was his job, and his job was to find the person or persons who'd taken that leggy blonde's life in the stairwell of the Riverwatch Hotel.

  Offering solace for a single night was one thing. That he could do. He'd wanted Frannie last night and he wanted her now just as badly. One way or another they were going to have their one-night stand.

  But taking this woman—or any woman—under his wing and into his life and keeping her there was out of the question.

  * * *

  Chapter 4

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  Mal wrote his home phone number on the back of his business card, and handed it to Frannie as she showed him to the door. Her fingers fluttered, as if she were thinking of refusing, but after a moment's hesitation she took the card from him, pinching it between two pale fingers as if she'd really rather not so much as touch it.

  Harry thanked Frannie for her cooperation and left with a promise to return the following day…

  [[…half page missing…]]

  "I'm not," he interrupted before she could go any further. "How could I? It was my fault. I never should have taken you to that place."

  She relaxed but didn't look directly at him. The light that shone through the open door behind him turned her hair and her face golden. He wanted to see her eyes in the sunlight, to see if they were truly as clear a blue as he remembered.

  "It's not your fault, Bridger." Her voice was soft, not quite a whisper. "It, uh, seemed like a good idea at the time."

  "It did, didn't it." He couldn't help himself. His hand lifted to touch her neck, his fingers light there where the sun shone on creamy skin. Frannie stepped back almost immediately, but he got his wish. She looked straight at him. Yes, her eyes were every bit as blue as he remembered.

  "It was a mistake," she insisted, though he didn't quite believe her. "Let's just forget it ever happened."

  Forget? Not likely. "Sure."

  There wasn't any reason for him
to stay here any longer. Harry was waiting, Frannie had dismissed him, and he had work to do. Still he lingered. "Call me," he said, motioning to the card in her hand. "If you have any questions or if you remember anything else, just give me a call. I'll be in the office this week, during business hours, and in the evening you can call me at home. Or page me," he added quickly. "Or try me on my cell phone. Those numbers are on the front."

  "I will," she said, but he had a feeling his business card was going to end up in the kitchen garbage on a nest of coffee grounds.

  Mal backed out of the doorway and Frannie very quickly and firmly closed the door in his face. She couldn't be rid of him fast enough, apparently. He spun around to see Harry leaning against the car, his pose casual, his gray hair silver in the sunlight.

  "So," Harry said softly as Mal approached the car. "You think she did it?"

  "No," he said, shocked that Harry could even consider Frannie a suspect. "No way."

  Harry rounded the car slowly. "Why no way? Because she has a pretty face? Because she collects broken angels? Or maybe because you obviously have the hots for her?"

  Mal stood by the passenger door and stared at Harry across the top of the tan Oldsmobile. "She's not the type."

  With a despairing sigh, Harry leaned against his door. "There is no such thing as the type, and you know it. Remember that nice old lady who killed her son-in-law because he criticized her Thanksgiving turkey? The fifteen-year-old girl who killed her parents and then tried to make it look like a home invasion? How about that baby-faced kid last year—"

  "Enough." Mal threw open the door and slid into Harry's car. "I get your point."

  Harry was much calmer as he took his seat. "If it makes you feel any better I don't think she did it, either," he said casually. "Maybe Loudermilk's smarter than we think, and he's got us fooled. Then again, we could be looking at a simple robbery that went ugly. All that aside, odds are there's an angry husband or boyfriend or ex somewhere, and he's our man." Harry slammed his keys into the ignition. "I just threw Miss Vaughn out there as a suspect to confirm a little suspicion of mine. A disturbing notion I have." His voice was soft, almost as if he were talking to himself. Still Mal had no doubt that the statement to come was for his benefit. "Detective Malcolm Bridger, thinking with his johnson."

  "Leave my johnson out of this," Mal grumbled, his eyes on the road as Harry started the car. He remembered the slam of Frannie's front door in his face … twice. "I am."

  * * *

  She'd checked every door and window twice, making sure the house was locked up tight and the blinds were tightly closed. It didn't make sense that she would be so nervous, but she was, and she had been all day.

  The woman she'd passed in the stairwell that morning had been so alive, so pretty, and now … now she was gone. Frannie didn't want to see the pictures Sergeant Dixon insisted on bringing by tomorrow, but she would look at them and confirm that this was the woman she'd spoken to.

  She pulled on her oversize football jersey and puttered around the house by the faint illumination of the bathroom light. One last sip of water, another check of the front door, and one more peek through the blinds in the living room. The driveway was empty, since Darlene's cousin Newton had carried her rebellious car off late that afternoon. He'd promised to have a look at it tomorrow and see if he couldn't figure out exactly what that noise in the engine was.

  But the sight of the empty driveway made her feel even more alone than before. Why was she so nervous? This was her home, her haven, and she was safe here.

  [[…half page missing…]]

  ...grains and lace and ruffles. It was a small bedroom, but she had made it her own and she loved it.

  She sat on the edge of her bed and glanced at the business card by the phone. She'd almost thrown it away. How long had she stood over the garbage can and tried to toss it out? She wasn't going to call Bridger, not for any reason. She wasn't going to remember anything else, and there was no other reason for her to call him. As she slipped her legs beneath the comforter, she took the card and looked at the numbers he'd scrawled on the back.

  What an idiot she was! How many times today had she looked at those numbers? A dozen, surely, probably more. The prefix was the same as hers, and a simple arrangement of two numbers made up the rest. It was almost midnight. What would he do if she called him right now?

  Frannie tossed the card onto the table where it landed by the phone. She could never call Bridger, no matter how much she wanted to do just that. Oh, she'd see him a time or two, maybe, as he investigated the murder at the Riverwatch Hotel, but it wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't be what she wanted.

  The last thing she needed in her life was a man whose life was filled with violence. Her second stepfather, Phil Stone, had been a vicious man. They hadn't seen it in him at first, but after a few months with his new family he'd changed. He liked to hit, mostly. The back of a hand, his belt if it was handy, and on one occasion a fist. It was Frannie's mother who was on the receiving end of the abuse, most of the time, though Phil had managed to get his stepdaughter good one time. Just once.

  Then one night he'd pulled a gun and threatened to kill them both. They'd been sitting on the couch watching television, and he'd come home drunk and waving a gun around.

  Frannie had been eleven at the time, and she could still remember looking down the barrel of the gun. She could still see it, the way the dark metal had reflected the light, and the little raised sight at the end of the barrel that seemed to be trained right on her.

  It had been hours later, while Phil slept off his drunk, that Frannie and her mother had packed a single bag and left, catching the next bus and riding off in the middle of the night, afraid, until the bus was well out of town, that Phil was right behind them.

  Frannie had never told her mother, but for years afterward she'd occasionally come awake in the night, startled out of a nightmare. Her eyes would fly open and she'd search the dark room, expecting Phil to be standing in a corner or in the closet with his gun pointed at her.

  Her mother had married or almost married losers after Phil, but none of them had been that bad. None of them had made Frannie fear for her life.

  As she lay safe in her bed she couldn't help but wonder if the woman in the stairwell had had time to fear for her life, or if she'd just … died.

  Frannie pulled the covers over her head. What thoughts to be having at bedtime! She'd give herself nightmares, bad dreams of the doomed woman and Phil, of guns and knives.

  But she surprised herself. When she did dream it was of Bridger, and it was most definitely not a nightmare.

  * * *

  Why was there never anything decent on television at two in the morning? Mal channel-surfed, searching for something even remotely entertaining. A bad movie, an old sitcom, anything. All he found was a bunch of infomercials and an old romantic comedy. He was definitely not in the mood for a romance of any kind, so he ended up vacillating between a show about car wax and another about spray-on hair.

  His jacket had been tossed over the back of a chair, his shoes kicked off, his tie loosened. He had been home more than two hours, but he hadn't even begun to unwind. In spite of the fact that Mal was on desk duty, Harry had allowed him to look at what little information they had about Decatur's latest murder victim, and he couldn't get the case off his mind.

  There hadn't been a single defensive wound on the blonde's body, not so much as a scratch. Either the killer had taken her completely by surprise, or she knew him and thought she was safe up to the moment he cut her throat. Maybe she never saw it coming.

  Loudermilk wasn't much of a suspect, in Mal's mind or in Harry's. Harry had always relied on his gut instincts, and that substantial gut of his was almost always accurate. Mal relied more on his brain. The guy just wasn't right. There was no history of violence, and he'd been clearly shaken by his encounter with the body. Still they couldn't eliminate anyone at this point.

  Until they identified the blonde they w
ouldn't get far in the investigation. Fortunately, the victim had a small tattoo, a heart, on her ankle. That would help in identification, if nothing came up on the fingerprints.

  They still had no murder weapon, and the closest thing they had to a witness was Frannie.

  Frannie. Maybe she was the real reason he couldn't sleep. They were unfinished, a song half played, an unsolved mystery.

  With a flick of his finger Mal switched back to the car wax. He really was hard up if he was sitting here in the middle of the night fantasizing about a woman who'd slammed her door in his face twice in the past twenty-four hours.

  * * *

  She wasn't sure what woke her. Still disoriented and more asleep than awake, Frannie rolled onto her stomach and grasped her pillow tight. What was that dream? Oh yes. She smiled against the pillow and tried to recapture her dream. Bridger.

  She was almost asleep again when she heard the noise, probably the same noise that had awakened her. It was not much more than a scrape—a shoe across the hardwood floor, a drawer being opened and closed, perhaps—but it didn't belong, not here, not now. She lifted her head and listened. All was silent for a moment, and then she heard the distinct sound of a drawer in the kitchen being closed.

  Her heart lurched and every muscle in her body tensed. Someone was in the house.

  For a few very long seconds she was frozen. What should she do? If she headed for the door she might run into the intruder, if she stayed here he might make his way to the bedroom and she'd be trapped. She looked at the window in one wall. Standing in front of that window she'd be fully exposed to the hallway, and since that particular window was painted shut it wouldn't be an easy—or silent—task to open it.

  She slid quietly from the bed to the floor, hiding in the shadows and bringing her bedside phone and Bridger's business card with her. Curled up with her back against the bed, she very carefully lifted the receiver from the cradle. The dial tone sounded incredibly loud. Frannie pressed the phone tightly to her ear and prayed silently that the intruder wouldn't hear it.