Beachcomber (7 page)

He also owned his own house, a nice ranch on Back Road, made a good living, and wanted kids.

“You say you saw a man.” Castellano stopped beside her and flipped back a couple of pages in his notebook, checking out what he’d already written.

“Yes.” Christy wet her lips.

“But you can’t describe him.”

“No.” They’d been over this before.

“Was he tall? Short? Heavyset? Thin? Any distinguishing features that you can remember at all?” He spoke with a tinge of impatience. Christy could feel him looking at her, but she refused to look back, keeping her eyes focused on the breaking waves instead. A needle of fear pricked her. Should she even have mentioned seeing a man? If the man had been sent by the mob and she talked about him to the sheriff’s department, the consequences could be bad.

Words to live by: Nobody had ever earned a Sicilian necktie by keeping her mouth shut.

“It was dark. Basically all I saw was a shadow.”

Castellano made a disgusted sound under his breath. Clearly not the answer he was looking for. Too bad. It was the best she was prepared to do. If she could have identified the guy positively, she might’ve taken a chance. But she couldn’t. All she could do was give a vague description of his size and coloring. That wasn’t enough to get anyone arrested—but it just might be enough to get her killed. Her heart skipped a beat at the thought.

“You say he had a gun.”

“I said it
might
have been a gun. He was carrying something in his hand. I’m not sure what it was.”

The nagging suspicion that it had been Castellano on the beach, Castellano tracking her by her footprints and then looking up to make that wordless but terrifying connection through the darkness, would not leave her. His build was right. The timing, as far as she had been able to work out, was doable. And he definitely had a gun.

Was he toying with her, feeling her out, testing her to find out what she had seen, what she would say? At the thought cold chills chased themselves up and down her spine.

“The victim spoke to you, is that correct?” From the corner of her eye she could see him consulting his notebook again.

“Y-yes.”

“This is real important. You sure you heard her speak?”

“Yes. I’m sure.” Christy glanced sideways at him. “Why is that so important?”

He hesitated, and looked up to meet her gaze. “Her throat was slit. So deeply that her vocal cords were severed. If she was talking to you, then it had to have happened after you left her.”

It took an instant for that to hit.

“Oh my God.” The woman
had
been murdered, then. It was a shock, but not really a surprise: Christy had sensed it from the time one of the firefighters had said the woman was dead. The man she had seen—he had to be the murderer. What were the chances that someone else could have materialized out of nowhere and killed her in the available amount of time? Not good. The menace she had sensed on the beach, the
evil, the danger, had been vented on someone else. It had been directed at her, but she had escaped. The other woman had not.

The dead woman on the beach could have been her. It almost
had
been her.

Suddenly Christy felt dizzy. Her head swam. A curious ringing sounded in her ears. She closed her eyes and took an involuntary step backward, only to come up against something solid. Hands grasped her shoulders, steadying her.

“Hey, that was a little insensitive, don’t you think?” Luke protested in his southern drawl. If Castellano replied, Christy didn’t register it. She leaned back against her suspicious, annoying neighbor because if she hadn’t she would have collapsed.

“Looks like they’re wrapping things up.” Mrs. Castellano, who’d been eagerly observing the proceedings from various vantage points, sounded almost disappointed as she joined them. Christy opened her eyes in time to see the stretcher being borne away, up the path through the dunes to where an ambulance waited to receive it. Yellow crime scene tape cordoned off the section of beach where the woman had lain. A police photographer was still inside the tape taking a few final pictures. His camera exploded in bright flashes against the inky ocean and a night sky that was being swallowed up by a fast-moving bank of clouds. The klieg lights that had been set up to illuminate the area were being shut down.

“Anything else you need to ask?” Luke asked. “’Cause it looks like it’s going to rain.”

“That’s it for now.” Castellano closed the notebook.
“Come on, Aunt Rosa, I’ll walk you up to the house. Things are going to be hopping around here tomorrow, so I’m going to head on home to bed now.”

The two of them started moving away.

“You ready to go?” Luke asked in her ear, tightening his hands on her arms. It was only then that Christy realized that she was still leaning back against him. Embarrassed, she straightened and pulled away with a nod, then hurried after the Castellanos. A moment later he fell in beside her as she walked with the Castellanos up the beach.

“You got her ID’d yet?” Mrs. Castellano asked her nephew.

“No, other than I’m pretty sure she’s not a year-rounder. At least, if she is, I don’t know her.”

“Gordie! Hey, Gordie, wait up!”

Like the others, Christy glanced around to find Aaron Steinberg hurrying after them. Watching him move toward her with the moon at his back, it occurred to her that he, too, was about the same size and shape as her pursuer. The primary difference was that the moonlight gleamed off his bald head.

He could have worn a cap.

Her heart beat faster at the realization.

“Any possibility that this could be one of those college girls who disappeared on Nags Head a couple weeks ago?” Steinberg asked as he caught up.

Castellano shrugged. “There’s no way to know until we get an ID.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but just this year alone there’s been something like five women gone missing
along the Carolina coast. That’s pretty interesting, don’t you think?”

“I heard tell there’s a serial killer on the loose,” Mrs. Castellano said. “Wouldn’t that be something? Now he’s hit so close, maybe I should get out my gun.”

A serial killer? Christy hadn’t thought of that. The very idea was terrifying—but no more terrifying than the thought of being the victim of a mob hit, which was her newest, deepest fear. When it came right down to it, though, dead was dead. It was also a state she had no desire to experience firsthand.

“I took your gun, Aunt Rosa, remember? After you tried to clean it and shot a hole in the bedroom wall.” Castellano sounded a little testy. He glanced at Steinberg. “You know, Aaron, people come and go around here for all kinds of reasons, and a serial killer’s about as good for tourism as a shark attack. I wouldn’t go speculating about anything like that in the paper, if I were you. Not unless you want to get strung up.”

“Hmm.” Steinberg shifted his attention to Christy. “Could you spell your last name for me? I wouldn’t want to get it wrong.”

“What do you mean, get it wrong? Get it wrong where?”

“I think he means in his newspaper,” Luke said.

“Is that what you mean? Are you going to put my name in the newspaper?” Christy was appalled. Then panicked. Somehow, she was fairly certain that Uncle Vince and company weren’t going to be thrilled with her if she ended up with her name plastered all over the news.

Steinberg beamed at her. “Dear, you found her. While taking a solitary, moonlit stroll along the beach. That’s news.”

“You know, this is just a thought, but putting her name in the paper might put her at risk. If there is a serial killer, I mean,” Luke pointed out in a dispassionate tone.

Steinberg looked a tad sulky. “I suppose I could just call her ‘a tourist.’”

“Yes,
please,
” Christy said.

“There’s no serial killer.” Castellano’s voice was grim. “Five women missing in an area as populated as this is a
coincidence,
and that’s all.”

“Can I quote you on that, Gordie?” Steinberg asked with a glimmer of humor.

“Hell, no. This entire conversation’s strictly off the record. Look, if you stop by tomorrow I’ll give you what we’ve got on this one tonight, okay? Probably we’ll find out that it’s nothing more than a bad domestic.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears.” Steinberg stopped walking, gave a farewell salute, and turned back toward the crime scene.

“Five missing women this year sounds like a lot,” Luke said, with the air of someone making a disinterested observation.

Castellano snorted. “Not when you consider how many tourists we’ve got coming through here every year. All types, too, and they bring their problems with them. Drugs, public drunkenness, domestic violence, sexual assaults, you name it and we arrest ’em for it. Population’s transient, too, which doesn’t help.” There
was a pause, and Christy became aware that Castellano was looking at Luke in a considering way. “You mind telling me what you do for a living?”

Just then their little group reached the path that led up through the dunes to Mrs. Castellano’s house. This was the long way around to get to Christy’s cottage, but she wasn’t about to break off and take the more direct route on her own—or with Luke, whose cottage lay just beyond hers, for an escort. There was, she felt, a certain safety in numbers.

“I’m a lawyer,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

Castellano seemed to find Luke’s stated profession only mildly interesting. Christy, on the other hand, was immediately struck. Covertly, she gave Luke another once-over. He didn’t look like a lawyer—but then, what did a lawyer look like? Short answer:
Not
a beach bum.

“We’ll walk you the rest of the way,” Castellano said when they reached the point where their paths diverged. Christy didn’t argue—no way was she arguing about that—so the whole group turned toward her house.

“You need something, I’m next door,” Luke said in her ear when they reached the edge of her patio.

Before Christy could reply, he raised a hand in farewell and continued on.

“What about your cat? Aren’t you going to look for him?” Mrs. Castellano called after him.

“Probably home already,” he called back, and kept walking until darkness swallowed him up.

“Any possibility he could be the man you saw on the beach?” Castellano asked.

“I don’t think so. But like I said, all I really saw was a shadow, a dark shape.”

Christy edged toward her door as she spoke. If the truth were told, she felt far more uncomfortable with Castellano than she did with Luke. Luke had been on her patio, true, and his stab at picking her up was not appreciated, but she was fairly confident that he hadn’t been the man on the beach. She was far less confident when it came to Castellano. Only Mrs. Castellano’s presence kept her from being truly frightened of him now. Wrapped in shadows, away from the klieg lights and the crowd on the beach, the bulky darkness of him looming so close made her stomach twist.

He
could have been the man on the beach.

“I’d like to get a formal statement from you tomorrow, if you’ll come down to the station,” Castellano said. Christy was already halfway across the patio.

“I’ll be there,” she replied over her shoulder, faking a cooperativeness she did not feel, and reached the patio door. They watched until she was inside. Flipping on the outside light, she waved, called “good night,” and slid the door shut.

And locked it. And drew the curtains. Then stood with her back pressed against it, eyes closed, chest tight.

It’s over,
she told herself.
You’re safe. You’re free.

All she had to do was pack and get the hell off this island. But first she needed to calm down. Put the nightmare on the beach behind her. Rejoice in being once again snug inside her own living room.

Her own dark living room.

Hadn’t she left a light on?

Christy’s eyes popped open. Enough yellowish light filtered in around the edges of the curtains to allow her to see. Her gaze flew to the floor lamp beside the couch. Her heart gave a great leap in her chest. She had left it on. She knew she had. She was—
almost
—one hundred percent positive.

Maybe the bulb had burned out.

Christy barely had time to register that as a legitimate possibility when the phone rang. She jumped at the sudden shrill sound, then hesitated as she made an automatic move to answer.

Who could be calling her here? Only a few people knew where she was. And none of them would call at this hour.

It could be a wrong number. Or a crank call. Christy prayed that it was one or the other even as she flipped on the overhead light and started for the phone, which rested on the tile-topped breakfast bar. Of course it was something like that.

But her sixth sense would not let her believe it.

Her sixth sense was signaling trouble again.

The phone was beginning its seventh ring when she finally got up enough nerve to pick up the receiver and put it to her ear.

“Hello?” she said.

4

F
ROWNING THOUGHTFULLY,
Luke let himself in to the small, ranch-style house that was his temporary home
cum
office. He was halfway across the lamp-lit living room before he noticed Gary, who had no business being in the house because he was supposed to be staking out the damned briefcase Christy Petrino had carted down to the beach a couple of hours earlier. Wearing headphones, Gary was waving frantically at him from Command Central, which was actually the tiny third bedroom.