Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [44]
The sound of the ringing phone drifted through the open kitchen window.
“I better get that. I’ll see you on Tuesday at Father Tim’s.”
“Want me to pick you up?”
“That’ll be great.” Kendra waved as she ran up the back steps. She caught the phone right as the answering machine picked up.
“Hello?” she said, breathless from the sprint.
There was just the faintest hint of music in the background.
“Hello?” she repeated.
When the silence continued, she hung up.
“Grrrr.” She growled and headed back for the kitchen when the phone rang again.
Tempted though she was to pound it with a hammer, she lifted the receiver.
“Now listen up. I don’t think you’re the least bit—”
“Kendra?”
“Adam? Did you just call here and hang up?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Someone did.”
“Wasn’t me. Maybe a wrong number?”
“I guess. It’s happened several times this week, though.” She relaxed. “Tell me, how’s the investigation going? I was just wondering if you’d gotten any response at all to the sketch. Other than the usual ‘I think I saw this guy with Elvis at a bar on the outskirts of town the other night’ . . .”
“Oh, there’s been a reaction, all right,” Adam said, his voice weary. “They found another body this morning in Newkirk—that’s near Lancaster. Everything fits, except the description of the last person she’d been seen with.”
“What’s different?”
“It seems our killer has shaved.”
“Shaved? But he didn’t have a beard.”
“No, but he did have a full head of hair.”
“He shaved his head?”
“Apparently so.” Adam paused, then asked, “Can you meet me at the police department here in Newkirk? Looks like your work might not be quite finished on this one.”
“You can always computer generate—” she started, but he interrupted.
“John wants you back on the case. He doesn’t believe a computer can capture the nuances of expression that you do. And neither do I.”
“All right. It will take me a few hours to get there, though.”
“I’ll be here,” Adam told her. “I won’t be going any place any time soon.”
Chapter
Nine
“I should have paid more attention. I should have watched out for her. I should never have let her walk out the door with that man. . . .”
Grace Tobin covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
“There was no way you could have known.” Kendra rubbed the back of the woman’s shoulders to comfort her. She looked across the room to where Adam sat, and shrugged slightly. The witness had to get through this part—the grief, the self-recrimination—before she could give them any information at all. Only after Grace had built some emotional fences would she be able to recall the events clearly. Where she had pulled back from Adam, Kendra willingly stepped into the role of comforter and willing shoulder to facilitate the process.
“He just seemed so nice, so sincere. Annie was taken with him from the minute she met him, I could tell.”
Kendra handed Grace a tissue and asked, “How could you tell? What did he do to get her attention, do you remember?”
“He was very quiet, very soft-spoken. Respectful, I’d say.” Grace sniffed. “He bought us both drinks and asked her to dance. . . . Annie loves to dance. She started taking lessons about two years ago, right after her divorce. It was the only thing she did for herself, you know? Everything else she did was for her kids.”
At the thought of Annie’s two children, Grace burst into tears all over again.
“What was his name, did he say?”
“Jeff. He said his name was Jeff.”
“Last name?”
“If he gave one I didn’t hear it. I was busy talking to someone else when he came up to us. Then he and Annie started talking, and they moved to a table. They talked for a couple of hours. Actually, it looked as if she was doing most of the talking. A couple of times I looked over and he was nodding, like he was agreeing with something she said, you know the way you do when you’re interested in the conversation. . . .” Grace’s eyes spilled over once again.
“Adam, perhaps you could get Grace a glass of water.” Kendra glanced in the direction of the kitchen. Due to the stress