“Do you need me?” Grace asked. She eyed Marlie’s pale, unconscious face worriedly. “I’ll be glad to sit up with her.”
“I can handle it. She’ll sleep for at least twelve hours.”
“Well, all right. Call me if you need me.”
“I will,” he said, and kissed her cheek. “Thanks for the offer, though.”
Marlie didn’t move during the drive through the misty, foggy night. Having seen it before, he wasn’t as worried as he had been the first time, but on the other hand, now he knew how exhausted she would be, and how long it would take her to recover. This had to be the last one. He couldn’t let her go through this time and again. As soon as they got a police sketch ready and to the media, he would put his plan into action.
He had barely gotten Marlie home and placed her on the bed before the phone began ringing. Irritably he snatched it up. “Hollister.”
It was Bonness. “We can’t wait until tomorrow to get started on that sketch. This is information that needs to be in newspapers tomorrow.”
“It’ll have to wait,” Dane said harshly. “She can’t do it now.”
“She has to.”
“She can’t,” he snapped. “This isn’t a choice she has, or that you have. She’s unconscious with exhaustion, and it takes hours for her to recover.”
“Maybe a doctor can give her adrenaline or something, to snap her out of it—”
Dane ground his teeth together to control a flare of fury. “I’ll break anyone’s arm who comes near her with a needle,” he said, his voice hard and crisp.
Bonness paused, taken aback more by the warning implic it in his tone than the actual words. The words were bad enough, but the tone was deadly. Nevertheless, he tried again. “Damn it, Hollister, you need to get your priorities straight—”
“They’re as straight as they’re going to get,” Dane interrupted again. “No one is touching her. I’m turning off the phone here, so she won’t be disturbed. If you need me, call the beeper number, but don’t waste my time trying to change my mind. Talk to Trammell if you have any doubts about her condition.”
“I already have,” Bonness said reluctantly.
“Then why the hell did you call?”
“I thought maybe there was something we could do—”
“I’ve already pushed her as far as possible, to get what information we did. This hit her harder than the last time, harder and faster. Just leave her alone and let her sleep. I promise that I’ll call as soon as she wakes up.”
“Well, all right.” Bonness was still reluctant. “But the chief is going to be pissed. Obviously, for us to have a sketch, there has to be a witness. He’s going to want to know who and how.”
“You can keep it quiet about the sketch until we actually have one. Until then, just say that a street informant gave us the word on another murder.”
“That’s a good idea. Okay. But when he finds out—”
“Blame it on me,” Dane said impatiently. “I can take the heat. But make it damn plain that if anyone gets to her, he’ll have to go through me.”
“I’ll do that.”
Hanging up the phone, Dane first cut off the ringer, then turned his attention back to Marlie. She lay limply where he had placed her, her chest barely moving. She had lost weight during these past few weeks, he realized, and she hadn’t had a lot to spare. When this was over, he was definitely taking her away on that vacation he had promised her, someplace quiet and serene, with nothing to do but eat, sleep, and make love.
Gently he removed her clothes and placed her, naked, between the sheets. Since he had moved in, she hadn’t worn anything to bed anyway. He checked the time: fifteen after midnight. Time for him to be in bed, too. He doubted he would sleep for quite a while yet, but at least he could hold her. He threw off his own clothes and got into bed beside her, then gathered her thin, silky body against his sheltering warmth. The faint, sweet scent of her skin soothed him. He buried his face against the thick swath of straight, dark hair. “Sleep, baby,” he whispered. “I’ll take care of you.”
He began trying to rouse her at eleven the next morning, but she was totally unresponsive. His beeper had been driving him crazy all morning. Bonness had called every half hour. Trammell had called twice. Grace had called three times, demanding to know if there was anything she could do, if he needed her to spell him so he could rest.
Trammell had hit on the idea of having the television and radio stations broadcast the information that there had been another murder, but that so far no victim had been found, and asking that people check on their neighbors and call their relatives to account for everyone. It was a tactic likely to drive some people into hysterics if a family member was unreachable for any reason, and Chief Champlin had gone through the roof when he heard it on the radio. The mayor was apoplectic. Didn’t they realize the risk they were running with lawsuits? He envisioned thousands of people suing over emotional distress. Bonness covered his ass by blaming it all on Trammell, even though he had given his approval. When the chief called him, screaming in fury, Trammell coolly pointed out that the tactic had precedence, that during natural disasters and emergencies, such as heat alerts, people were often urged to check on their friends and relatives. That calmed the chief down somewhat, but he still wasn’t happy.
All over the city, telephones and doorbells rang.
Carroll Janes, indulging in a lazy morning in bed, was puzzled when he turned on the television at noon and heard the news. If the cops hadn’t found the victim, how did they know there was one? He wasn’t alarmed, though; he was almost certain no one had seen him, even at a distance, but even if someone had, he couldn’t be identified. He yawned and turned off the television set. Let them look.