A good night’s sleep and he could view the case with fresh eyes and hopefully see the lead they were missing.
Her friends stayed with her till gone midnight, talking mostly of murder and hot detective, Jake Sullivan. Amy humoured them on both counts and didn’t bother to point out that she thought Sullivan was a jerk.
Gage took Huckleberry for his night-time pee while the girls cleared up the kitchen, then there were hugs and kisses before Amy and the collie were alone. Huckleberry was supposed to sleep in the living room, but within two nights of staying with Amy had muscled his way into the bedroom. He whined if she tried to kick him out, so it was easier to let him sleep on the floor beside her bed. She had finished the best part of a bottle of wine and her drunken thoughts of graveside murders and Nadine causing a scene in Too Many Books rolled into one as she drifted to sleep. Those thoughts disappeared as she entered dreamland and an old nightmare surfaced, one she hadn’t suffered from in a long time.
Stone stairs leading downwards.
She knew she shouldn’t go down them, that something terrible waited at the bottom, but she couldn’t stop herself from descending.
The steps went on forever. Lower, closer, the fear suffocating her as she approached the door.
The nightmare always ended in the same place, as she was stepping into the room.
Amy would wake herself up at this point, screaming and soaked in sweat.
It was just a stupid nightmare, she knew that, one she’d had for years. She’d thought she had finally grown out of it, but tonight it returned and when she woke screaming she scared the bejesus out of Huckleberry.
As the dog woofed and growled, Amy padded to the kitchen for a glass of water, drawing deep breaths to calm her shaky nerves. The dream never failed to unsettle her, and she knew it would be a while before she would drift back to sleep.
As she lay in the darkness in the tangled sheets, listening to the sound of the crickets buzzing through the open bedroom window, Amy had a premonition. It could be the nightmare had unsettled her, but she had an ominous feeling something bad was about to happen.
6
Rebecca held out on Alan until Wednesday, partly because she was pissed at him, partly because she felt guilty, and partly because she had been up to her neck with work.
They were struggling to catch a break on the church murders; the trail of clues had run cold.
Amy Gallaty’s alibi had checked out. She had been working from seven until one thirty and had about twenty witnesses who could verify her location during the murders. They had delved into her backstory too, and there was nothing suspicious that painted her as the kind of girl to be involved in a murder.
She was squeaky clean, and in her thirty-five years had never had any run-ins with the police, had no points on her licence, and everyone spoke highly of her. She had no family, except a distant aunt she never saw, her own parents having been killed in an automobile accident when she was twenty-two and, from all appearances, she lived quietly in the city, writing her books and waitressing at the Velvet Lounge, a job she had held down for six years.
Her publisher, a small local firm, had worked with her from the publication of her first book, Grave Encounters, and portrayed her as a talented writer who’d not yet managed to catch a break. Her employers at the Velvet Lounge also sang her praises, calling her punctual, professional and friendly; a girl with a positive outlook who loved her friends and her life in the city.
She didn’t come across as someone with enemies and definitely not as a psychotic killer or someone cold-blooded enough to plan pre-meditated murder.
The fan from the bookstore had also been checked out: Nadine Williams had an alibi for the night of the murder and denied vandalising Amy’s car. Rebecca and Jake had paid a visit to the home she shared with her boyfriend, Troy Cunningham, and had seen the signed pictures she had taken of herself with Amy at the launches of each book, while the novels themselves sat proudly on a bookshelf, flanked by A to Z bookends.
Nadine Williams was a little obsessed with the Zack Maguire series, but there was nothing to suggest she was anything more than an over-zealous and disappointed fan.
Rebecca felt most sorry for Troy, who undoubtedly had to live up to Nadine’s expectations of Zack Maguire on a day to day basis.
The dead kids weren’t throwing up any clues. Ben and Kasey had both been students at Juniper College, an establishment with its own grisly history. The campus had moved to a different location four years ago, but Rebecca doubted it would ever shake off its gruesome reputation.
Kasey had been a local girl, born and raised in Juniper, while Ben came from Virginia and was the nephew of Senator Blaine Hogan – an additional headache neither detective needed, as Hogan was already cranking up the pressure to make an arrest.
Ben and Kasey were both clean and nothing in their lives suggested enemies who might want them dead. Kasey had a jealous ex they were checking, but word suggested he was all talk and no action.
It could be a political connection to Blaine Hogan, but Rebecca and Jake didn’t think so. The killing was the work of a psychopath, not an assassin.
It was early evening Wednesday when Rebecca returned to her townhouse after a day of questioning more of Ben and Kasey’s friends, to find Alan waiting for her, his face partially hidden behind a bouquet of yellow roses.
Her heart sank as she pulled the car to a halt by the curb. It had been a long day and she yearned for a hot shower and a cold beer. She couldn’t avoid him forever though and, in truth, knew he didn’t deserve the treatment she was giving him.
‘You haven’t been returning my calls,’ he said, by way of greeting, getting to his feet and thrusting the flowers at her.
Her mother would be appalled at the way Rebecca had treated him. Sarah Angell thought highly of Alan and considered him to be by far the most suitable of her youngest daughter’s boyfriends. Definite marriage material, that’s what she had called him. Rebecca was the only one of her daughters who hadn’t yet settled down: her older sister, Jess, was now engaged and her middle sister, Wendy, already married with kids. As her mother liked to point out, Rebecca wasn’t getting any younger; if she couldn’t persuade her to move back to Swallow Falls, she would at least rest safe knowing she had a stable and solid man like Alan taking care of her.
‘I’m sorry, Alan, it’s this case. We’re crazy busy.’
To make her feel even more guilty he took a sympathetic tone. ‘I understand; I’ve seen the news.’
Ben Hogan’s high-profile connections had made it impossible to keep the gory details of the murders out of the press, but so far they had managed to suppress the link to the book.
‘As long as you’re not mad at me, that’s all that matters.’
Rebecca had been mad at him for a while, and it was ridiculous. Alan was a good man. He was kind, considerate and articulate, and he worshipped the ground she walked on. She didn’t deserve him.
‘I’m not mad at you, I promise. Just really busy.’
‘You’re not busy now. Let me take you to dinner, Becky. We can catch up and you can tell me about the case.’
Rebecca deliberated for a moment. She just wanted beer and TV, but she guessed she owed him after the way she had shot him down on Saturday night in front of her friends.