Chapter 6

"Wade, please! You're hurting my hand!"

He glanced around. He had her hand in a crushing grip. He released her hand and said, "I'm sorry."

"Wade, what is it? Something's bothering you since we left the restaurant. Now what is it?"

He looked at her thoughtfully, the piquant face illuminated briefly as the cab sped under overhead street lights, then falling into shadow again. He was going to have to tell her the truth some time; it might as well be now. He took the plunge. "Lisa, I lied to you."

"Lied?" Her face jumped into the light and was as quickly in shadow again. "Lied about what?"

He looked back through the cab window. "And right now we're being followed. I don't know who he is, but it may place you in danger. That's why I have to tell you, to prepare you."

"Followed? Danger? Prepare me? For heaven's sake, Wade, what on earth are you talking about? You're not making any kind of sense!"

She seized his arm and gave it an exasperated shake.

"I know more about Claire's death than I told you. At lease I think I do. But first I must ask you some questions. You'll just have to accept my word that they're important."

"Questions?" Her face darted into the light again, eyes staring at him. "Are you a detective?"

"A detective?" He laughed mirthlessly. "Hardly. Hardly that."

"Then what are you?"

"I'm just a guy, a cowhand out of time and place. I didn't lie to you about that. But there's more to it ... Lisa, you said the police haven't solved the case. Do they have any leads at all, any they told you about?"

"They have very little to go on, or so they told me." Her voice was low, somehow accusing. "They said Claire had been seen with a man in a restaurant the night she was killed.

But that means nothing. She was always being seen with a man. And nobody has come forward to admit being in the apartment with her that night. They did find a few unidentified fingerprints. On an ashtray on the nightstand by the bed. Where else?"

"Unidentified?"

"So they told me."

Wade had never been fingerprinted. To the best of his knowledge, his prints weren't on file anywhere. The prints were-likely his. "And her body was discovered by a cleaning woman late in the morning after she was killed?"

"So I was told. What difference does that make?"

"Did you ever hear of a man named Lieutenant Brewer in connection with the investigation? He's supposed to be on Homicide."

"The man who questioned me was named Hawkins. The men with him sometimes called him Hawkshaw. I never heard of a Brewer."

The cab pulled into the curb in front of the apartment building. As Wade paid the driver, he glanced back up the block. A few doors up the street, the second cab pulled up and discharged its passenger. Wade didn't wait to catch a glimpse of the passenger. He seized Lisa's arm and hurried her inside. Neither said anything about Wade coming in with Lisa; it was taken for granted. And neither said a word until the apartment door was closed behind them and they were finally alone.

Then Lisa whirled on him, her eyes flashing danger signals. "Now what is this all about?"

Wade motioned to her with one hand and strode across to the window. But he was in for a disappointment. The window didn't overlook the street. Probably the man watching had taken up a position where he could watch the front door. Wade wondered, idly, if the building had a back entrance.

"Wade," Lisa said in a strangled voice, "will you pay attention to me?"

Wade turned toward her with a sigh. "All right, Lisa. The man in the restaurant with Claire? That was me. The fingerprints on the ashtray? Mine. At least I think they were." At her shocked look, he nodded quickly. "Yes. I made love to her that night. Or she made love to me. That might be a better way to put it. But I didn't kill her. I swear to you, Lisa!"

She was already across the room to the telephone, stumbling in her frantic haste. She picked up the receiver and started to dial.

"Lisa ... let me tell you my side of it first. I know you don't owe me anything but ... well, I listened to you, didn't I? If, after you hear what I have to say, you still want to call the police, I won't stop you."

She stopped dialing and looked over at him. He held himself very still. He sensed that a single step in her direction would panic her.

After a long moment, she slowly replaced the receiver and came toward him uncertainly. "All right, Wade, I'll listen. I do owe you that much. But I can't promise anything."

He nodded.. "Right. No promises."

They sat down, each on the opposite ends of the couch, and he told her about it. He began with the day he met Sylvester and brought her up to the present moment, omitting nothing. She sat tensely, listening with that idol-stillness of hers. Slowly, she relaxed. When he was finished, she accepted the cigarette he offered and leaned back, studying him through a thin veil of smoke.

Now her smile came. "You have to be telling the truth, Wade. It's too incredible a story, too bizarre, to be a lie."

"Either that or I really am whacky," he said ruefully.

She shook her head violently. "I refuse to believe that. You're no crazier than I am."

"Thanks for that much, Lisa. Even if you're no expert, it makes me feel better hearing you say it."

"But what does it all mean, Wade?" She moved along the couch toward him. "It doesn't make any sense. There's no logic to any of it."

"You're telling me?" He took her hand between both of his. Hers jumped for an instant, then remained still. "I've thought about it until my brain's raw. I've found very little today that's of any help."

"But you can't just vanish without a trace! There has to be proof that Wade Carson exists. A Social Security card, a driver's license, and so forth. All those things can be traced back."

"Yes, I've thought of that. But it would all take time, and somehow I don't think I have much time. And that would only prove that I'm not crazy. I would still be open for a murder charge. Although I can't see how, I'm sure your sister's death is at the core of it."

"Then we have to find who killed her!" Then she laughed. "Look at me! A detective yet!"

"Me too. And the detecting I've done today has proved only one thing. A detective I'm not."

"But we have to try, darling. We have to try."

Wade's heart lurched at the "darling." Lisa gave no indication that she had noticed. Maybe it had been nothing more than a slip of the tongue.

"This woman," she said with a grimace of distaste, "this Janis. She must be the key to it. She has to know you're not her husband."

"Apparently she's the only one. And that reminds me." He glanced at his watch with a start. "My God, it's nearly midnight! If I don't get on back she'll have, if not the police, Dr. Hunter and Jocko out looking for me."

"You have to go back to her?" She stood up with him.

"I don't see I have much choice, do you?"

Her shoulders heaved in a sigh. "I suppose not. But I hate to know you're...."

Her voice died away as her gaze met his and locked. He took a step, she took a step, and it was the most natural thing in the world for him to take her into his arms. Her body was supple, soft and heated to his touch. Her mouth was sweet. Wade felt the firm shape of her breasts against his chest. The nipples stirred, and Lisa moaned deep in her throat.

When they broke the kiss to gasp for breath, Wade bracketed her face with his hands, his thumbs on her throat. The pulse there beat wildly. He kissed her again, gently this time, his lips barely touching the softness of hers.

"Darling ... I don't want you to go back to her."

"You think I want to?" he asked huskily. He felt a great surge of exultation. Crazy as it seemed, knowing her for only a few hours, he was drawn to her as she was to him. The endearment was no slip of the tongue this time. He said, "And if I keep this up, I'll never leave!" He stepped away from her.

Lisa laughed softly. In the eternal female gesture her hand came up to pat at her hair. "How about that man watching downstairs? You could slip out the back door."

Wade shrugged. "No, I want him to know I've left. If he's the same man who's been watching me, he knows about Janis, knows that's where I belong. If he doesn't see me leave, he'll watch this place all night."

"I don't mind. I'm sure he means me no harm."

"I do mind," he said sharply. "And I'm not so sure. I don't know who he means to harm. Maybe nobody. He might just be keeping tabs on me, but I'm taking no chances on you getting hurt."

After promising to get in touch with Lisa the next day, he left the apartment with a light step. He'd read about hearts singing but had never really believed it, putting it down as a writer's romantic imagine. Now he wasn't so sure. He felt like jumping up and down and singing at the top of his voice.

Outside the building he stopped to light a cigarette and looked both ways along the street. He saw no one. He started walking; after a half block he whirled around and glanced back just in time to see a dark figure duck out of sight behind a hedge.

He grinned, his mood suddenly gay. He murmured, "I'd feel lost without you, old buddy."

He stopped under a street light to check his money. He had enough left to take a cab. He thought it ironic that Janis was paying for his evening with Lisa. A new thought struck him.

Could his shadow be a private detective Janis had hired to keep tabs on him? If that were true, the day had indeed cost her! She would undoubtedly be furious. He walked on humming under his breath, walked on until he found an empty cab to hail.

Janis was already furious. She was pacing the floor tigerishly when he let himself in the apartment. And she was half smashed, a glass in her hand. She lurched toward him, some of the liquor slopping out of her glass. "Where the hell have you been ? " she cried wildly. "I've been half out of my mind!"

Well, that's a new switch, he thought wryly. How does it feel, baby? And yet he was sure he detected genuine concern under her fury. He said, "I'm sorry you're upset. It's been so long since I've been on my own I guess I forgot the time. I wandered around, had a couple of drinks and then dinner." He watched her intently. If the shadow had been in touch with her ... but, of course, he hadn't. Not yet.

Some of the tension seemed to leave her. She drained her glass, swayed, and said in a blurred voice, "You could have called me, goddamn it!"

"I could have. I didn't think of it."

She gestured suddenly, her smile tremulous. "It's all right. It's over and you're all right. That's what counts. I was afraid you might have had a...."

"A relapse?" he said, his voice hard.

She shook her head violently. "No, no, not that. I'm sure that won't happen now." She took two stumbling steps and fell against him. The glass dropped from her hand, thudding onto the carpet. Her breath had the scent of gin.

Automatically, he caught at her slumping body, thinking she was about to pass out. Then her arms looped around his neck. She breathed into his ear, then ran the tip of her tongue inside.

Wade thought of Lisa and he felt a quiver of revulsion toward this woman. He reached up to unlock her arms from around his neck, then stopped as she said, "It's been a long day without you, baby. A damned long day!"

So it was "baby" again! What had brought about the change? The gin? Or could she possibly have missed him? Whatever the reason, he sensed that this time, unlike the other times when she had been wholly intended on feeding animal needs, he might be able to get information from her.

He released her hands and dropped his down to cup the jut of her buttocks. At his touch she arched against him, moaning, her pelvis moving lanquidly. Wade hated himself for what he was about to do; it made him feel like a male whore. Yet if it would help squeeze information from her, he could throw a blanket over his conscience for as long as it took. His eyes closed as he kissed her, and the image of Lisa danced on his eyelids. He closed his mind to all thought of Lisa.

Janis pulled her mouth away to murmur, "I need it, too, baby! God, do I ever! But not here. Not on the floor like animals! In your bedroom."

They moved down the hall, his arm around her waist. Twice before they reached his bedroom, she turned into his arms seeking his mouth with burning hunger. She was in a tight pink dress of some silken material. As her passion mounted, her entire body seemed to grow tumescent and she threatened to split the dress. Or so it seemed to Wade. The familiar roaring sound filled his head; he was rapidly forgetting his purpose in starting this.

Inside the bedroom she fell against him, her mouth moist and open. Through the tight dress he felt the taut-nippled breasts. She rubbed her breasts back and forth across his chest. Then she tilted her face up, standing on tiptoe, and ran the hot point of her tongue behind his ear-lobe. In a sudden, spasmic motion she thrust herself against him, her pelvis making a circular motion.

"Would you have called the police if I hadn't shown up soon?"

"Not the police, baby," she said thickly.

"Dr. Hunter?"

"Not him, either."

"Who, then?"

"I called Garth..." Her voice snapped off with a sound as clearly audible as ice cracking, and her body went tense.

"Garth? Who's Garth?"

"Just a friend. Nobody you know."

He could feel her withdrawal and he sensed that he would get nothing more from her. If he persisted, he would probably spook her. He found her breasts through the dress and fondled the unharnessed nipples. After a moment she relaxed again, the breath leaving her in a sigh.

"Open my dress, baby," she said in his ear.

He fumbled for the side zipper and drew it down. When his hands moved inside the dress, he discovered, without surprise, that she was naked. His fingers feathered the soft mound of her belly and she shivered convulsively. She arched her mouth to his and took his tongue greedily.

In a little while she pulled back to say, "Why don't you take these damned clothes off?"

"Whose?" he asked dreamily.

"Ours. Yours and mine."

Without a word, he reached down for the hem of her dress and peeled it up over her head, tossed it aside. In the dim light he saw her shiver under the impact of his gaze. When his glance reached her loins, Janis moved her hips in a motion as old as time and managed to make it seem fresh and immediate. His excitement doubled and he started toward her.

His knuckles barely grazed her, bringing a hiss of indrawn breath from her, before she twisted away from him. "Hurry, baby. Get rid of your clothes." She ran to the bed and fell across it in a wanton sprawl. She waited impatiently, her hips in constant, lewd motion.

When he joined her on the bed, she encased him in writhing, heated flesh. Slowly he probed at her body with lips and tongue and fingers. He savored each quiver of her body. In a short while, she was trembling from head to toe. Her fingers pulled and hauled at him. Finally she moaned, "Please, baby. I can stand just so much and no more! If you don't do something, I'll...."

Her body convulsed as he took her. Staring down at her, he saw her lips twisting with mindless desire, the veins in her eyelids blue and trembling. Her nails gouged his back. Her eyes opened wide as he drove against her. When she saw him looking at her, she muttered something, then pulled his head down and bit his lip.

Their rhythm doubled and redoubled. Wade gloried in the throbbing of his senses, in the yielding, grasping need of her body. The slashing, demanding speed of her lashing hips drove him to an unbearable height of sensation before his ecstasy broke. His mouth was open and his throat felt raw when a measure of sanity returned to him. He vaguely recalled the sound of a snarling animal in the room and he knew it must have come from him. He was lying half across Janis, chest heaving as he fought for breath.

Now she began squirming, pushing at him. In that, she hadn't changed! He rolled over and let her get up. He heard the whisper of her bare feet as she walked away. Yet there was one difference tonight. She was back in a few minutes. She nudged his shoulder with a knee, then put her weight on the knee, leaning toward him, bare breasts swinging inches from his face, as she said, "Bart, you didn't take your pills today. Not one pill. Here, be a good boy now."

In one hand she had a glass of water, in the other two large pills. He took the pills without argument, washed them down with water, and returned the glass to her. "Sleep tight, baby," Janis said as she moved off, her voice cottony in the dark, faintly mocking.

And he did. He fell into a deep, dark sleep almost before she was out of the room.