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“That’s all it said. Two words. For Stephanie.”
TWENTY-ONE
I WAS ON MY BACK, looking up at Morelli through cobwebs, and my first thought was that the 7-Eleven victim had exacted revenge on me, and I’d been stun gunned. The cobwebs cleared, and I discounted stun gunning.
“What happened?” I asked Morelli.
“You fainted.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I agree, but if someone sent me a dead woman I might faint, too.” He was down on one knee, bending over me. “Are you ready to get up?”
“I need a moment.”
“Don’t take too long. People will think I’m proposing.”
I slowly got to my feet. “Why me?”
“I don’t know. Have you been getting threatening letters or phone calls?”
“The only one threatening me is your grandmother.”
“Ranger had cameras working and apparently captured the drop. I haven’t seen the video yet, but I’m told the killer was covered head to toe. The interesting thing is he delivered the victim here in her own car.”
“Have you found the car?”
“Not yet. And if we don’t it’ll be following the pattern because we never found Dugan’s car or Lucarelli’s car. Disappeared without a trace.” He kissed me on the forehead. “I have to get back to the station. I want to see the video, and I’m going to run some names through the system. See if I can connect someone to you and Dugan. There are only a handful of people who know about this note, so keep it to yourself.”
“Ranger?”
“You can tell Ranger.”
Lula was standing by the bus, waiting for me. She was dressed in poison green spandex pants, five-inch leopard stilettos, a low-cut scoop neck stretchy lemon yellow shirt, and she’d had her hair done up in braids that made her look like she was wearing a giant spider on her head.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Another body. This one wasn’t buried. Just deposited.”
“We have a sick individual here. He’s killing too many people. He might even be over the legal limit for Trenton.”
For the sake of keeping the note secret I was trying to look calm, but I was actually very rattled. In a back corner of my mind there’d been a nagging thought that Vinnie or the bonds office might have been involved somehow. It never occurred to me that I was the connection. And pinning a note on a dead woman and addressing it to me as if it were a gift tag was hideously disgusting and beyond frightening.
“You look real freaked,” Lula said. “Are you okay?”
“I have problems.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
There was a laundry list, ending with the big one I couldn’t talk about. “For starters, I’ve got the vordo.”
“So you be a good time. What’s wrong with that?”
“I’m too much of a good time. It’s even more confusing than when I wasn’t a good time at all. And I think I might be getting a bladder infection.”
“A bladder infection’s no good. Maybe you should cut back.”
“I can’t cut back. I’ve turned into a sex addict. I get within a foot of Ranger or Morelli and I’m ready to go … and go, and go, and go, and go.”
