To Die For

Chapter Four

For a moment or two Tanda sat motionless with fear, and then the low banging noise came again. This time it sounded like someone trying to break something at the back of the house while struggling not to make too much noise. Animals were notorious for not caring how much noise they made, and that, along with the barking of the other dogs, clinched it. Some human was out there, and at that time of night it couldn’t possibly be a friend or neighbor.

But it could be a police patrol, sent by Mike Gerard to keep an eye on her. Poking around to be sure she was all right shouldn’t sound like that, but it was still possible. Maybe she ought to go and take a look…

“But I think I’ll call and ask first,” she muttered, reaching for the bedside telephone. “They’ll know at headquarters whether anyone is supposed to be out here.”

She would have preferred calling Mike Gerard rather than some stranger at police headquarters, but there was no need to bother the man over a false alarm. And that was what Tanda hoped it was, nothing but a false alarm…

“Police headquarters, Sergeant Walters,” an official voice announced from the other end of the line. “How can I help you?”

“Sergeant, this is Tanda Grail, out on Old Stage Road,” Tanda replied. “I’m involved with Lieutenant Gerard over that murder this morning, as well as my brother’s murder a week ago. Can you tell me if Lieutenant Gerard left orders for officers to check my house during the night? I hear someone out there, but I’ll feel silly if I charge out to confront a couple of police officers just doing their job.”

“I’ll check on that, Ms. Grail,” the man’s voice said, no longer remote and indifferent. “But please don’t talk about charging out and confronting. If someone is out there…Well, we’d rather you didn’t. And are you certain there’s someone there? Could it be an animal, or an unlatched door swinging?”

“No to both,” Tanda answered. “I might not be sure, but my dog is. It’s definitely not an animal, and definitely not a door.”

“Then hold on for a moment.” Tanda expected to be switched to hold, but the sergeant just put a hand over the mouthpiece of his phone. She could hear the mutter of voices in brief conversation, and then the sergeant was back. “Ms. Grail, there were orders left for you to be checked on, but the unit assigned to do the checking isn’t currently near your house. We have them on their way now, and they’ll be there in a few minutes. Please stay inside until they knock on your door and announce themselves. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I do understand, and thank you,” Tanda said automatically before hanging up. Once the connection was broken, she realized she could have stayed on the line until the patrol unit arrived, but what was the point? If whoever was out there broke in, having a cop on the other end of the line wasn’t likely to keep her from being killed.

Tanda ran both hands through her hair, trying to fight off the creeping numbness of fear. If it wasn’t the police out there, it had to be the murderer. The idea of it being someone else, just at this time, even an ordinary burglar, was too far-fetched to consider. Another muffled clank came, telling the nearby world that the person was still out there, and the sound did something strange to Tanda. It made her realize that her brother’s murderer was in reach, the person she wanted so badly to find. Was she just going to sit here and tremble, forgetting about what had been stolen from her? Wasn’t there something she could do to make sure the man didn’t get away?

Tanda knew there had to be something, and reborn anger drove away enough of the fear to let her get out of bed. Robby was still growling softly as she began to throw on clothes, and that bolstered her courage even more. Between her and her dog the murderer would be outnumbered, and once the police got here, the nightmare would be over. An outcome like that was worth taking a chance for, more than worth it.

It didn’t take long before she was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and sneakers, and Robby was beginning to be calmly excited. The dog knew they were going out after whoever was making that noise, and he was ready to do his job. If the intruder tried to run away, so much the better. Robby would be right behind him, and more than able to run him to ground.

Tanda turned out the light in the room before easing the door open, wishing she had Robby’s serene confidence. She was determined to do whatever she could to catch the murderer, but that didn’t mean her fear was gone. Slipping out into the dark of the hall was hard, but turning on a light was out of the question. If the person outside realized she was awake and coming after him…

Yes. Tanda dropped that line of thought quickly, paying more attention to making her way toward the front door. She’d briefly considered going down to the cellar and confronting the intruder directly, but had dismissed the idea as impractical. The new lock on the cellar door in back was on the outside; even if it hadn’t been, she didn’t care for the idea of opening the bolt on the door in the house leading down to the cellar. Just because the sounds seemed to be coming from outside, that didn’t mean the man hadn’t managed to get inside. Meeting a murderer face-to-face indoors seemed fractionally worse than meeting one outdoors, and whether or not that was true, it was still the way she felt.

So she edged through the kitchen and on toward the living room, grateful for the kitchen’s night-light and wishing the living room had one, too. After tonight she’d make sure it had one—assuming nothing happened to keep her from seeing to it.

“Stop that!” she whispered to herself almost soundlessly. “Of course nothing will happen. You’ll just have to be very careful…”

And stick close to Robby. Tanda was aware of the dog despite her nervousness, or maybe even more because of it. He’d stopped in the living room to her left, momentarily unmoving, which made her stop as well. It was almost as though he was listening to something, and she’d never seen him do that before. A tracking dog isn’t in the habit of listening…

And then he did what he was in the habit of doing, something that nearly made her jump out of her skin. With the sort of baying bark he used when he was almost on the quarry, Robby loped directly toward the front windows. Tanda was so startled she banged into the coffee table, bruising her legs and nearly falling. She had no idea what had made Robby do that—until she realized the banging at the back of the house seemed to have stopped.

“He’s coming around to the front!” she whispered, suddenly frantic. “If I don’t get out there before he reaches the door—”

Then there would be nothing to keep the man from coming in when she opened the door. And she had to open the door, or the opportunity to catch her brother’s killer would be gone. Understanding that helped Tanda to ignore the pain in her legs as she stumbled around the coffee table, and by the time she reached the front door Robby was beside her. Taking courage from his presence she flipped on the porch light, flung the door open and charged outside—

Only to see nothing and no one. Her heart pounded like that drum people always talked about, and it took a moment to realize that part of the noise she heard wasn’t from that. Someone was in the woods and running, definitely away from the house, and Robby stood quivering and staring in that direction. Tanda dashed back inside, got the flashlight from the table near the door, ran back out and told Robby, “Find ’em!”

The dog took off like a launched rocket, the command freeing him to do what he’d been waiting and longing to. Tanda yelped and ran after him, all the excitement having made her forget that the dog wasn’t on a lead. If she didn’t really move she would lose him, especially in the dark. When he reached the quarry—and he would—she fully intended to be right there.

Happily the flashlight was a powerful one, and Tanda was able to glimpse Robby as well as hear him. The woods were more than nighttime-quiet; with two people and a dog running through them, night birds and small animals were keeping silent and playing invisible. Tanda knew these woods well enough to run with confidence, which gave her real hope that in just a few minutes she would at least catch sight of the man responsible for her brother’s death. And if Robby could corner him and hold him until the police arrived—

The sound of a car door slamming ended that line of thought in the worst possible way. An instant later the car’s engine roared it away, showing that the vehicle had probably not been turned off. Taillights flared redly a short distance ahead, and then they, too, were gone, back to Old Stage Road. Tanda immediately whistled for Robby, and after a moment the dog trotted up.

“Poor guy,” Tanda commiserated as she leaned down to gently rough him up. “I’ll bet you were no more than half a jump behind when he got to that car. It’s too bad it didn’t stall out and leave him stuck, the way it probably would have done if I was the one being chased. We might as well go back to the house.”

Robby wasn’t happy about abandoning the chase, but he still followed right after Tanda. The dog seemed to understand somehow that it wasn’t an exercise or a game they were involved in, or even a job for some nearby police department. It was his own house that intruder had been prowling around, and that apparently made the matter personal.

The walk back didn’t take long, but Tanda wasn’t given the chance to go inside. Headlights flared along the tar road, silently announcing the approach of a car, and for an instant she thought it might be the intruder coming back again. Then she saw the wide set of lights on the car’s roof, and realized the police had finally made it. The way they headed right for her said they thought she might be the intruder they were there for. When they stopped about ten feet back and got out, their hands were cautiously close to their weapons.

“It’s all right, Officers, I’m Tanda Grail,” she called to them, patting Robby to calm away his growl. “There was someone out here, but he got away. If he hadn’t left a car in the woods with the engine running, my dog would have had him.”

“You saw the prowler, ma’am?” one of the officers asked, a young man with light brown hair and a calm expression. “Can you give us a description of him and his car?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Tanda admitted. “He was doing something at the back of the house, but started around to the front just before I came out. My dog heard him and began to bay, and that must have frightened him. He was already into the woods by the time we got out here, and the head start let him reach his car before my dog reached him. By the time I got there, there was nothing to see but vanishing taillights.”

“You were probably lucky he didn’t stick around,” the second officer said, the first being busy writing. He was older than the first man, and not quite as calm or neutral. “I’ll call this in, and then we’ll have a look around.”

There wasn’t much Tanda could say to that, since disagreeing about being lucky would only start an argument. She waited until the incident had been called in and written up, then led the way around to the back of the house. The two officers had their own flashlights, but Tanda was first to see what the intruder had been up to.

“Look at the scrapes on that lock!” she exclaimed, shocked in spite of herself. “It was brand new when I put it on only a few hours ago, but look at it now!”

“Likely it was a tire iron he used,” the second officer said after bending down to examine the lock. “Or maybe he found something in that shed.”

He’d turned to flash his light at the shed, but Tanda shook her head.

“There’s nothing left in the shed he could have used,” she said. “I put the bolt cutters and anything else that might be used to force a lock into the cellar. There didn’t seem to be much sense in putting on a new lock if I left something to force it open with.”

“It’s a good thing you thought of that, ma’am,” the younger man said with respectful approval. “A lot of people wouldn’t have, and their house would have been broken into again.”

“Considering what you’re involved in, Ms. Grail, I think we should get a forensics team out here,” the older man said. “At the very least they should be able to get tire-track impressions, if you can show them where the car was parked.”

“If I can’t find the spot again, my dog can,” Tanda assured the man.

That time both men nodded, then they began to lead the way back to their car. With the most immediate excitement over, Tanda was beginning to feel just how tired she was. It would have been nice to go back to bed—with the light left on for the rest of the night—but it was fairly clear that that would not be happening for a while.

MIKE GERARD TRIED not to break any traffic laws on his way out to the Grail place, but it was a near thing. He kept wanting to do ninety to get there faster, just to be certain Tanda really was all right. He felt disappointed that she’d called headquarters rather than him, but at least she hadn’t tried to handle the matter all alone. He must have made his point about the foolishness of trying to face a serial killer alone.

The turnoff to the Grail place wasn’t difficult to find even in the middle-of-the-night darkness. Two police units and a forensics van were parked on the tar road leading to the house, and all three vehicles had their lights on. Mike pulled up to the left of the van, and when he got out he saw Tanda sitting on the porch steps with one of her dogs. Flashlight beams coming from the woods to the right and darting out from behind the house told him where everyone else was.

“I was asked to keep out of the way,” Tanda called softly when she saw him, obviously following his thoughts. “They were all very polite about not wanting to bother me anymore, but what they meant was, stay out of the way. I’m sorry you had to be dragged out of bed after all. I should have realized they would call you once they saw there really was a prowler.”

“My beauty sleep can wait,” Mike told her with a smile as he stopped a couple of feet from where she sat. “My people know I’ll enjoy that sleep a lot more once this serial killer is caught. They also passed on what you told the officers. Are you sure you saw nothing of the man or his car?”

“By the time I got out here, he was already in the woods,” she said, then put a hand on her dog’s head. “Robby here heard him coming around to the front of the house, and let loose with one of his ‘here comes the quarry I’m going to have for lunch’ barks. It makes him sound really dangerous, and the prowler must have panicked. He got to his car fast, and all I saw of it was headlights in front and taillights toward me. The only thing I can tell you about the car for certain is that it didn’t have its windows open.”

“You were able to see that?” Mike asked, wondering how it could be possible. “That and nothing else?”

“No, no, I couldn’t see it,” she corrected with a slightly wider smile. “I keep forgetting you don’t know much about trained dogs. I know the windows weren’t open because Robby gave up the trail once the car pulled away. If the windows had been open, he would have bayed to show he was still on the trail. Do you understand?”

“Do you mean to say a bloodhound can follow someone in a car as long as the windows are down?” Mike demanded, then realized how the words must sound. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to all but call you a liar, but…”

“But the idea is a hard one to believe,” she finished when he didn’t, amused rather than insulted. “The movies have a lot to do with it, because they’ll have a fugitive escape in a car when the script calls for it. The windows on the car are usually wide open, but the script insists the fugitive escapes, so the dogs have to lose the trail. If those dogs were mine, they wouldn’t.”

Mike just stood there shaking his head, at the same time wondering why bloodhounds weren’t used more.

“I’d better check to see what the forensics people have found so far,” he said at last, then gave Tanda a grin. “After that, I won’t feel so stupid, and you can tell me some more about bloodhounds.”

“Not knowing about bloodhounds doesn’t make you stupid, only uninformed,” she assured him with a soft smile, then the smile faded. “If they’ve found anything important, will you be able to tell me about it?”

“I’m sure I will,” he soothed her, wishing he could take her hand or put an arm around her shoulders. “I’ll be right back.”

He waited for her nod and then walked away, heading around the back of the house. The other dogs in their runs to the left were awake and alert, but weren’t making any noise.

“Glad you made it, Gerard,” one of the forensics people, Alec Ellison, said as soon as Mike appeared. “There isn’t too much here, but I can tell you one thing: whoever tried the break-in was no professional. My six-year-old son would have had better luck—without it being a matter of luck.”

“Your six-year-old son could probably get into a bank vault,” Mike pointed out, causing Ellison to grin. “Like father, like son. What specifically makes you think it wasn’t a pro?”

“All those scratches and small dents on the lock, for one thing,” Ellison answered. “The perp used either a tire iron or a crowbar, or maybe just a length of pipe, but was also obviously trying to use strength instead of leverage. Slip some cold steel through the lock loop, brace the steel and lean. If the lock doesn’t fly open from your body weight alone, the hasp will probably come free of the wood. Whoever was here seemed to be trying to pull the lock open, and when that didn’t work he tried banging on it. Even dead drunk a pro would do better than that, and would certainly have been quieter.”

“Make that ‘she’ rather than ‘he,’” a voice corrected, and Mike turned to see forensics expert Lora Clark approaching. “We found more than just tire tracks out in those woods, we also found a couple of good footprints that are definitely from women’s shoes. People should learn not to go sneaking across open ground after a rain.”

“Are you sure, Lora?” Mike couldn’t help asking. “All the profiles insist it’s a man, and if it isn’t we’re back to square one. Could you have found Ms. Grail’s prints instead?”

“Not unless Ms. Grail is able to leave two different sets of footprints telling two different stories,” Lora denied cheerfully. “You know how I hate to ruin perfectly good theories, but unless this was done by someone just happening by, your quarry isn’t a man. Ms. Grail’s prints were easy to match up, and the other woman’s were totally different. I’d say about five foot five or six, about a hundred twenty-five pounds, not very athletic. Even when she was running it wasn’t full out, as if she didn’t know how to run properly.”

“That agrees with what I found here,” Ellison put in as Mike groaningly took out his notebook. “A woman who isn’t very athletic, and never even thought about breaking in somewhere. A desperate amateur trying a desperate gamble.”

“That doesn’t fit the profile at all,” Mike said as he noted down what both of the forensics people had told him. “And there’s been no indication that the murders were committed by more than one person. What about the tire tracks?”

“They seem to be standard tires that can be found on most midsize cars,” Lora supplied with a sigh. “Steel-belted radials that almost everyone sells, but we’ll be able to give you the manufacturer as soon as we do a tread-pattern comparison. The tires weren’t new, but there should be enough of a pattern left for identification. And we’ll sift through everything again to be certain we didn’t miss something useful.”

“A picture ID supplying a name and address would do nicely,” Mike said as the two began to turn away. “If you find one, I’ll be around front with Ms. Grail.”

“If we find one, I’ll be passed out cold in a faint,” Lora countered over her shoulder as she headed back toward the woods.

As Mike turned back toward the front of the house, he decided he’d be better off without something like an accidentally dropped picture ID. He’d find it almost impossible to believe that the thing had been dropped accidentally, and would resist considering it a real clue unless or until he caught the pictured person in the act of committing murder.

Tanda no longer sat on the front steps where she’d been, but the inside door was open and through the screen door Mike could hear her moving around. A moment later she reappeared carrying a tray, and after holding the door for her dog to come through, she set the tray down with a smile.

“I thought everyone might want a cup of coffee as badly as I do,” she said, gesturing to the pot and cups on the tray. “I feel silly playing hostess at a time like this, but—Have you found out anything?”

“Nothing useful,” Mike admitted as he walked to the tray. “And I don’t know about the others, but I find a cup of coffee at a time like this something to be grateful for. My people tell me the intruder’s footprints say it was a woman, and the attempt to break in was unskilled. Either we were wrong about our murderer being a man, or he has a non-burglar female confederate we hadn’t even suspected. It’s highly unlikely that someone totally unconnected with the murders just happened to decide to break in.”