Heather Graham - Picture Me Dead

“Hey, you know what? I’m suddenly dying for a burger.”

“You want us to come with you?” Mario asked. “I guess I could eat a burger.”

“Hell, no, you don’t really want a burger, and I don’t need help to take a ride to Denny’s,” Len said cheerfully.

“You sure?” Mario asked. He yawned. “Hell, I’m beat.”

“Get to sleep. I won’t be long, and I’ll try not to make a racket when I get back.”

“Last man in gets the cot,” Kyle reminded him.

“Yeah, well, one of us had to get it, right?”

He grinned, turned and headed back for the car.

He didn’t drive to Denny’s. He turned his car toward the girls’ hotel and parked.

Karen had given him their room number, and mentioned that they’d wound up on the first floor, so the sliding glass doors at the back opened up to a little courtyard and garden area.

He headed for the courtyard and figured out which room it would be.

The lights were on. One person was moving inside. He knew it was Ashley.

The drapes were thin, the light behind them bright. He could see her every movement. She walked around, paused by the window, drew the curtain back and looked out.

He flattened himself against a gardenia tree.

She was holding a cup of something, just gazing out. She was wearing a long T-shirt that clung to her. In the artificial light, her hair blazed. The wavy ends seemed to curl protectively around her breasts. The knit shirt hugged the length of her. She never could have imagined just how provocative she looked.

His fingers wound into his palms, and tension streaked through the length of him. You don’t know just how well I know you, Ashley, he thought. I knew you’d be the one who was awake, I knew I could come here and see you. And one day, Ashley, you’ll find out just what you’ve made me feel all this time.

One day.

The sliders were open, only the screen in place, letting in the breeze.

That one day…

Could be tonight.

No. Not tonight. Tonight, he would just watch.

But soon. Soon she would know. He’d make her know.

The night was beautiful. Just beautiful. But not even the stars in the sky or the soft glow of moonlight on the exquisite little garden could draw her attention.

She stepped back into the room and went over to the desk. She’d already taken her sketch pad out.

She started to draw. First, the body…the body on the highway.

A man, young, muscle structure taut beneath…the spatters of blood. His hair covering his face, a soft ash blond.

Around him…the officer who had arrived on the scene. The police car. The two drivers. Their cars. The traffic slowing, veering…nearly hitting the median.

The median. The opposing traffic…

The figure across the expanse of lanes.

She sketched, shading in until, even in black and white and shades of gray, the scene was eerily real. And everything detailed except…the figure. The vague figure across the many lanes. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember any details…

It was all as she had remembered it, how the camera in her mind’s eye had frozen the image.

Everything so specific—except for the dark figure who seemed to be watching…looking…

For what?

Assurance that the man—the poor, pathetic man, near-naked and bloodied—was, indeed, dead?

A chill suddenly swept over her.

A breeze…

More than a breeze. Something that made her slightly…uneasy.

She turned quickly, then felt foolish. Even so, she walked over to the doors, then closed and locked them. She looked at the thin drapes, frowning, thinking that the sun would come rushing in the next morning.

The next morning. It was morning, and that sun would be coming soon.

Pulling the light draperies back, she saw the set of lightproof draperies, pulled them, then checked the lock once again and went to lie down on the couch.

She closed her eyes, but the image of the body on the highway still haunted her.

Swearing, she pounded her pillow. Counting sheep had always seemed like such a ridiculous thing to do….

And yet she was desperate.

She counted horses instead.

Strange dream. There was fog and sunlight. She was walking toward him in the dream. Sometimes they were on a beach, and sometimes she was moving toward him in the cabin of the Gwendolyn. Hair spilling down her back, flesh…yeah, naked flesh, all of it being touched by the sun and by the shadow.

Nancy…

He’d dreamed often that she’d been there, with him, trying to tell him something. Except that it hadn’t been like this. Before, they’d just been talking. Discussing the case. The frustrations, the dead ends. But she’d known something. Reckless, restless, unhappy in her married life, she was determined to throw her heart into her work.

They were good partners.

Not good enough. There had been something more, something she had suspected, something she had thought of doing to break the wall they were up against.

Then he dreamed of her face as it had looked, on the autopsy table, after they had found her. And that would always strike such a chord of horror in his heart and mind that he awakened.

Not tonight, though. Tonight that image didn’t appear.

He couldn’t see her clearly. Her hair wasn’t dark; it was red in the light.

It wasn’t Nancy. Just someone like her. Who moved something like her…

It was Nick’s girl. Walking with a slow, confident, easy rhythm. She reached him. The dream progressed. Memory faded, the now took hold. She was different, very much alive, real, vibrant. She was…reaching him. Touching him. She was…

He awoke abruptly, in a cold sweat. The alarm was ringing.

Fuck.

No. Not the alarm, the phone. Hell, what time was it? The middle of the night. And still, bleary, wretched, he was glad of the sound. It had drawn him from the depths of the most bizarre wet dream…about Nick’s kid. He needed to stay the hell away from her. Far away.

Shouldn’t be hard, not after the way they had just reacquainted themselves.

The phone…

Still ringing, like a hammer pounding inside his head.

He picked up the phone. Listened. And his knuckles went white against the receiver.

“There’s not a lot left of the face,” Martin Moore said, nodding to the uniformed officer who allowed him and Jake through the crime tape to the off-road location where the body had been discovered.

“I think the recent rains washed her down here. She was probably buried in a shallow grave farther in from the road.”

It was the crack of dawn, Saturday morning.

He wished he hadn’t switched to Scotch the night before.

And he wished he had one then. Marty’s call had been way beyond bizarre.

So much for the long weekend off. But since the case had never been officially closed, he had been called in. Marty had been in vice, the narcotics squad, five years ago, when the first murders had occurred, but he had worked with Jake for a long time now and knew the past history of what were still referred to as the Bordon murders—as well as anyone. He also lived in the area, so he’d reached the scene first.

Police floodlights helped illuminate the area, which was still dark. Inky dark. Much of this part of the county had been developed out of land that was really part of the Everglades. The dirt was rich here and the foliage thick. Lights were few and far between. Before dawn, the darkness could be a strange ebony, as if the Glades had reclaimed what was really part of a no man’s land.

Jake paused a few feet from the corpse, taking his first look at the body that had been discovered that morning by a jogger. A foolish jogger, he thought, running at a time when the night still held sway in an area where the obsidian shadows and undergrowth could hide many a sin.