Talk (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  While they had been in Long Island, Alexandra's housekeeper, the infamous Mrs. Roberts, had visited, for all the suitcases and clothes that had been strewn all over the guest room and in Alexandra's study had been carefully unpacked and organized.

  "I have got to get these shoes off," Jessica said, slipping off the black high heels she had never worn before. She had dressed respectfully for Bea: a simple black dress, a single strand of pearls, pearl earrings, black stockings. No one wore black to funerals anymore, her mother always told her, but Jessica didn't care. To wear this getup was paying the highest compliment she could.

  "Okay, who wants what?" she asked, picking up the pad and pen on the telephone table and throwing herself down on the couch. They had all missed lunch in order to get out to Long Island in time for the funeral.

  "What are you having?" Slim asked.

  "Park Burger, well done—that's got bacon, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo, catsup and mustard, and pickles, too, I think—and, let's see... onion rings. And a Pepsi." She looked at Wendy. "What about you?"

  "Plain hamburger—no bun—with lettuce, tomato and onion, cottage cheese and fruit salad, if they have it."

  "What to drink?"

  "Water's fine," Wendy said, going into the guest room.

  "The woman's sick," Jessica said, looking to Slim. "You like Park Burgers," she reminded him.

  "Yeah. That would be good."

  "Okay, three Park Burgers for Slim," Jessica said, marking this down, "an order of fries and onion rings, and a man-handler Pepsi." She looked to Will.

  "One Park Burger and I'll share your onion rings," he said.

  Jessica frowned. "Who said I wanted to share?" She winked. "To drink?”

  ''I'll have water, too.”

  Jessica studied the list and then sighed. "Okay, I guess I'll have water, too. Not that grease is water soluble.

  The food came and was eaten and soon they were all yawning. Wendy ended up passing on the StairMaster and went into the guest room to take a nap, Slim stretched out on the couch in the living room, and Jessica and Will went into Alexandra's bedroom ostensibly to watch TV.

  As soon as she closed the door behind them, however, Jessica knew dam well what she wanted to do. And judging from Will's expression, she knew he did, too.

  Without a word they went to each other and started kissing. The kissing gave way to moving onto the bed, lying across it, kissing each other's faces and eyes and ears, necks and throats. In very short time they had taken Jessica's stockings off, and her dress, and Will's shirt and pants—for the first time there was contact of skin that left Jessica breathless.

  There was nothing remarkable about Will's body, at least not from Jessica's experience. He was neither particularly muscular nor remarkably endowed. He was simply fit and healthy and desperate in his desire for her. On her part, it was impossible to pretend that her chest was normal—it simply wasn't, but rather, an embarrassment of riches for those so inclined to enjoy. Not everyone was so inclined, Jessica knew.

  But Will was. And it did not take long for her brassiere to be off, and then her panties, and then his underpants, though they only continued to roll around, kissing each other, exploring each other with their hands and mouths, prolonging release and reveling in the obvious joy of their bodies. But then it became time critical. His erection was impossible to ignore, the sleek dampness between her legs extreme.

  "Do you—I mean—do we have any birth control?" he murmured into her ear.

  Jessica froze. Of all the times in her life not to be on the Pill. Of all the times in her life not to have condoms. After all these years she was finally with a man she knew to be a good man, through and through, and instead of running from him, she had embraced him, gotten to know him, let their emotions and attachment develop, and now that she wanted this man inside her more than she had dam near ever wanted anything in her life, she had no birth control on hand. She wanted to feel him inside her so badly she considered lying. But that was not to be the game in this relationship. In fact, there were to be no games at all. No lies. No gambling with pregnancy.

  Although she frankly couldn't imagine any child nicer than one fathered by this man.

  Jessica loudly sighed. "I don't."

  She wondered if she should ask him if he had a condom or two in his wallet. Surely a former playboy would. But if he did and he brought them forth, would he think she'd think less of him? That he carried them around just in case he got lucky and had a chance to sleep with somebody?

  "I don't, either," he said through clenched teeth.

  Was he thinking now, as she was now, that he should go out and ask Slim if he had anything on him? (Good grief, Jessica thought, Slim's weight was one of the best birth control measures she had ever seen. He'd kill anybody he lay on.)

  Alexandra certainly wouldn't have anything around. Although, wait a minute...

  "You don't suppose there's anything left around from Gordon, do you?" Will asked, reading Jessica's mind. Gordon had been Alexandra's last fiancé. But in the next moment he said, "They'd be too old, though, wouldn't they?"

  "He wasn't the last guy," Jessica blurted out. Nice. Blabbing her friend's secrets—Alexandra's halfhearted sexual attempt with another man before Georgiana had come into her life. "I could look around in the bathroom. Oh, God, no, I couldn't do that. I can't snoop in her private stuff."

  He chuckled into the side of her neck and then sighed a big sigh of frustration. "Oh, we're a pair, aren't we?"

  "I suppose you could," Jessica began, "well, you know, if you pulled out in time—"

  "Sorry, darling, but it's too dangerous," he said. "Not with how worked up you've got me." He raised himself on one elbow to look at her. "But I know what I'd really, really like to do, at least for you, to compensate..."

  "What's that?" Then she sat up, getting it. He meant oral sex. "But I haven't even showered or anything."

  "Well, we could take a shower or something," he said, smiling.

  "You are brilliant," she told him, kissing him.

  And so they scrambled off the bed and into the bathroom and ran water into the tub, and poured in bubble bath.

  The bath was delicious. Jessica sat in front, Will in back, and he bathed her from behind. And then she turned around to face him—the faucet pressing into her spine like a gun—and she bathed him, taking extra care with the soap below. His eyes closed, desire rendering him helpless.

  Jessica simply continued, stroking, soaping, gently increasing speed and pressure until Will's eyes flew open and he covered her hand with his own. "Shh, it's okay, close your eyes," she whispered, now on her knees in the tub, leaning forward to kiss him, and then resting the side of her face on his shoulder. It was a very awkward position, but it made him obey and Jessica's excitement grew as she realized he was going to let her do it, let her stroke him, faster and faster in the warm soapy water, until beneath her hand she felt the telltale movement of his gland saying it was coming, he was coming, and...

  Indeed, he did, with a quiet moan and sigh. Now the awkwardness of the situation. Of Jessica's position.

  But Will was kissing her face, holding her, and then lifting her to an upright position and then he got up, water streaming from him, and pulled her up to her feet so that he could hold her fully against him and kiss her. Then he stepped out of the tub, led her out, toweled them both off and took her into the bedroom. He helped her onto the bed, onto her back, closed her eyes with his hand, and then she felt him lift her up to slide a pillow beneath her. And moments later, his movements so smooth she hadn't even realized he was down there, had eased her legs apart and—

  Jessica took a sharp breath as she felt his mouth on her.

  Oh, he was no novice at this. And she let him, as he had let her, and let herself slide away into the sensation, something that had been impossible forever and ever it seemed, since she had stopped drinking. But it was happening, she was letting go, and he was taking her very far, very deep down inside herself, a
nd it took a while, too long, she thought—poor Will—but she didn't care because it was as if she had turned a comer, the sudden ph.mge down inside herself, the feeling that she couldn't stop it now if she tried, and then she was pulling down hard on the sensation, crying out, feeling her body plunge and then surge against him, helpless, until that rolling energy broke to skitter into nerves, and she grabbed his head to stop him.

  "Oh my," she said, relaxing, looking up at the ceiling. And then she laughed. "Oh my." And she reached down for him. "Come up here this minute." And he climbed up to hold her in his arms, and they lay there, kissing. And talking. And kissing. And feeling each other until it was time to help him out again.

  And he helped her out again.

  And then they fell asleep.

  The next thing Jessica knew, Alexandra was standing in the doorway, blinking at the sight of her and Will intertwined in the mess of sheets that had once been her neatly made bed.

  "Oh, good," the anchorwoman said. "I was hoping you might find something to take your mind off things."

  Part III

  Trap

  10

  It had been two weeks since the murder of Bea Blakely and things had, as much as possible, returned to normal at the West End Broadcasting Center. Jessica had a new temporary secretary, a man this time—who also happened to double as another bodyguard—and much had been discovered about the double life that Bea Blakely had led.

  The NYPD found that in the seven weeks prior to Bea's death, she had made three separate deposits of five thousand dollars into her bank account, and a final one of ten thousand dollars. The first three were payments accounted for by The Inquiring Eye tabloid magazine, payments they made to Ms. Blakely for "Information regarding the personal life of the talk-show host Jessica Wright."

  The information supplied had been copies of letters sent to Jessica by the Doc after she dumped him—which the tabloid had wisely paraphrased so as to avoid prosecution for copyright violation. The letters had described Jessica as "a coldhearted, self-centered bitch" who had no mind of her own and was incapable of any relationship beyond "the cold, calculating standards of a prostitute."

  Bea had also supplied the tabloid with a sketch of Jessica's day-to-day life, including work, AA meetings and "hours of crying from loneliness because of her inability to sustain relationships."

  Bea had also told them that Jessica was no longer taking birth control pills, that she had seen a psychotherapist for five years and was prone to melancholy blues.

  The ten-thousand-dollar deposit, however, had police baffled. It had come from a cashier's check, made out to Bea Blakely, issued from the First Bank of Las Vegas in Nevada. What this check had been for, or who had issued it was unknown. The only thing the teller could remember about the person purchasing the cashier's check was that it had been a polite man who had paid in cash. "One of those nice nerdy guys," the teller explained. "He said he had won big in the casino the night before."

  Trying to find a nice nerdy guy who had won ten thousand dollars or more in a nameless casino somewhere in Las Vegas several months before seemed like an impossible task. The FBI, however, was studiously crosschecking the IRS forms submitted by every casino for the three nights prior to the purchase of the bank check. The problem was, the NYPD or the FBI didn't really know who or what they were looking for. Bea's parents had no idea who might have given their daughter ten thousand dollars. And no, they couldn't remember Bea ever mentioning a boyfriend, or really any kind of a friend for years.

  The NYPD was openly working with the FBI to track down Jessica's stalker-turned-murderer. Less openly, Cassy and Dirk and members of DBS News were in full cooperation. The FBI agent in charge, Norman Kunsa, had not only worked with Dirk before, when the security expert had been an active agent, but with Cassy herself, years ago when she had tipped him off to a major inside trading scam at a Fortune 500 company.

  "It was him, I feel sure of it," Dirk was saying to Cassy and Detective Hepplewhite and Agent Kunsa who had gathered in her office. "Leopold, the stalker," Dirk continued. "He paid Bea the ten thousand. For information, or for—“ He looked at Agent Kunsa. "Maybe you should explain."

  "Stalkers like this Leopold almost always work alone," Agent Kunsa said. "Carefully premeditated murders, like the one of Bea Blakely, are most often carried out alone. However, to penetrate West End security, we're convinced Leopold had to have the help of someone on the inside."

  "So you believe Bea was helping the stalker," Cassy said.

  "Yes."

  Cassy stared down at her legal pad for a moment. "It would help explain how he got into West End," she finally said. "And why he hasn't appeared at West End since her murder." She looked up. "But what about Alexandra's farm? How the hell did he get through there?"

  "We're working on it," the agent promised.

  "Well, where are we now? I mean, what do you have?" Cassy wanted to know. "Definitively, what can I pass on to my people?"

  Detective Hepplewhite flipped open a notebook. "Bea Blakely was electrocuted at 11:35 p.m. on Saturday night. The method of execution was the diversion of eleven hundred volts from a power cable in the wall into the telephone wire leading to the in-house phone in property room three. We know the perp got access to that wall unit from the ventilation shaft leading from the storage room next door, property room two. We believe he placed a splice that was activated by timer or remote control, but we can't be positive because the resulting fire in the wall melted just about everything."

  "So," Cassy interjected, "that means he wasn't necessarily here, physically, at West End, to commit the murder."

  "We're not sure," Hepplewhite said. "On one hand, if he had been anywhere near the splice he would have died in the fire—or been electrocuted himself. On the other hand, we believe the victim was expecting his call, or he was actually speaking with her, when the splice relayed the power. It was an in-house phone, but it could receive calls from outside the complex."

  "So even if he wasn't here when she died, he did have to be here at some point, in West End, to set up that splice and relay," Cassy said.

  "Yes."

  Cassy's jaw visibly tensed. "What kind of sick creature could do this?"

  "One who thinks this is a game," Kunsa said.

  "A game?"

  Dirk was nodding. "Stalkers, or murderers like this, are always playing a game. It's him against us, and for him, every successful contact is a round won. He wants us to feel like he's been everywhere, like he's a phantom, and he's daring us to catch him."

  "And how does he win this game?" Cassy asked impatiently. "Exactly what does he have to do to Jessica?" She held her hand up to block an answer. "Never mind." She paused, thinking, and then looked at Agent Kunsa. "So how do we find him? It sounds like you've got next to nothing to go on."

  "That's not true," the agent said. "We've got a general profile on this guy already. Our people say he's probably a white male, in his thirties, a loner who's incapable of sustaining a normal relationship with a woman. He's very bright, socially backward and has extensive training and experience in electricity, electronics and probably computers. He's very insecure, has a tendency toward depression and might live with his mother or another dominating female. And although he's very bright and highly skilled, he probably has a low-level job due to his difficulty relating to people. His job is definitely connected with electricity in some way, probably in construction or with one of the power companies here in the city. The fact he is familiar with West End tells us that he is—or has in the past—probably worked here in some capacity. Maybe in the building of the complex, or in connection with its maintenance, repairs or upgrade of its equipment."

  "But the whole complex is in the business of electronics!" Cassy said. "The electronic retrieval companies, the research labs, TV broadcasting, our satellite hookup with the affiliates, the Darenbrook printing plants and newspaper distribution centers—good Lord, that's all that we do here. Maintain, repair and upgrade systems th
at run on electricity." She turned to Dirk. "Do we know how many outside maintenance and technical people we've had in here the last couple of months?”

  “About three hundred.”

  “About three hundred," Cassy repeated, not looking terribly happy.

  "We've got a lot more to work with than you think," Agent Kunsa told her.

  "But it's been two weeks!”

  "We'll get him," the FBI agent said.

  Cassy sat back in her chair, ran her hands over her hair and then dropped her hands on the desk with a thud. "Maybe what I don't understand is what this guy is getting out of this. Why he's stalking Jessica in the first place.”

  "His need to do it," Kunsa said, "is based on his need to feel alive, and it's the kick he gets from this that makes him feel alive."

  "What kind of kick could anyone possibly get from murdering someone in cold blood?" Cassy demanded.

  "Sexual." The tone Kunsa used was chilling. "He jerks off over it. I apologize for being so crude, but there it is. When he stalked Jessica through the mail, he jerked off over it. When that wasn't enough, he penetrated West End security and starting jerking off over that. And when that wasn't enough, the stakes of the game rose to something that would really get him sexually excited—murder. And now that the heat's on and he feels he has to cool it, the only way he can masturbate successfully will be to relive the murder somehow, the chase, his obsession with Jessica, the whole game."

  Cassy's expression was one of utter revulsion. She looked away, pressing her hand over her eyes for a moment. She lowered her hand. "I think we're insane to even consider holding Jessica's book party."

  "But that's how we're going to get him," Kunsa said. "Predators like this will generally do anything to stay near the investigation, to stay near their prey. Often they try to inject themselves into the investigation, trying to be helpful."