If Looks Could Kill

The dreams had started with her mother’s death.

She lay down on her bed again, staring up at the ceiling, wishing she didn’t feel so overcome by memories. She hadn’t had any strange visions for five years after her mother’s death.

Then she’d had the first of the dreams.

In her dream she was walking away from an unknown house. Quietly. Tiptoeing. She realized that she held a gun. She heard noises and saw a car. She was angry, somehow aware that it was her car, and that someone was trying to steal it.

She crept out and raised the gun….

There was a violent pain in her arm, and she cried out, then woke up, rubbing her arm and shaking.

She was in her bedroom at her father’s house, the room she shared with her sister Kaila. Kaila was across the room in her own bed, just waking up, rubbing her eyes. “Madison? Madison, what’s wrong?” She jumped out of bed and came hurrying over to Madison’s bed, sitting beside her.

They often fought, as most sisters, especially those so close in age, fought. But there was also a warmth between them. They were very unalike in personality, yet so similar in appearance that they might have been identical twins.

“It was nothing, just a dream,” Madison assured Kaila quickly.

“Did you hurt your arm?”

“What? No?” But she was still rubbing her arm, even though there was nothing wrong with it. She shook her head sheepishly. “No, no, I’m fine. I had a nightmare, but it’s all right now. Sorry I woke you.”

“What was it about?”

“It was stupid. I was somebody else, in a different house. Someone was trying to steal my car, and I had a gun and was going to stop what was happening—then someone hit my arm, and I woke up. Dumb, huh?”

Kaila shrugged. “Well, different. You sure you’re okay now?”

Tomorrow they would be fighting over makeup or who had taken whose new jeans. But for now…Madison nodded, and Kaila gave her a quick, fierce hug and went back to bed.

A few days later, when Madison still felt the dream nagging at her, she called Jimmy Gates. He wasn’t in, and, feeling foolish, she left no message except her first name.

That afternoon, when Madison was driven home by Darryl Hart, the Hart-Throb of the school, she was startled to see a car in her father’s expansive driveway, with a familiar man leaning against it. Detective Jimmy Gates. He was a little bit older now, showing premature signs of silver at his temples. He looked distinguished, befitting a man who’d gotten a number of promotions and citations during the five years since Lainie’s murder.

She stared at him, feeling increasingly uneasy. She shouldn’t have called him. She’d just had a dream, that was all.

Darryl behaved like the perfect high school stud he was, setting protective hands on her shoulders. “Who is he? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Darryl. He’s an old friend of the family. I think we probably need to talk alone. Call me later tonight?”

“Sure. Except maybe I shouldn’t leave you alone with him. So much strange stuff happens these days.”

“It’s all right, Darryl. He’s a cop.”

Darryl drove away unhappily, watching her in the rearview mirror as he backed out of the drive. Jimmy smiled at her. “Hi.”

“Hi, Jimmy. You still playing ‘Miami Vice’?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “You know there’s no such thing,” he said.

“Homicide,” she said flatly.

“Yeah, I’m still homicide. And I need to know why you called.”

She hesitated, then told him about the dream, apologizing for calling him while trying to sound matter-of-fact and not like a fool.

Jimmy looked off into the distance, hesitating, then stared at her. “Have you heard about the Peterson case?”

She nodded and tried to pretend that a strange, cold sensation wasn’t sweeping over her. She’d heard. Everyone in the city had heard. Earl Peterson had gotten his legally licensed handgun out of the cabinet where he kept it carefully under lock and key, to go outside when he heard noises by his car. He had tussled with someone outside and been killed with his own gun. He’d been found by his wife at six o’clock the following morning.

“I think maybe you can help me,” Jimmy said.

“You do?” She shouldn’t have called him. She felt ill. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help him—she just wished she didn’t have the knowledge to do so.

“You have something, Madison. Something special. Will you help me?”

She hesitated. Her father wouldn’t like it, but she was almost eighteen. She had seen Mrs. Peterson sobbing softly on television, and if she could do anything to ease the woman’s suffering, she would.

She walked toward the car, and Jimmy opened the passenger door for her. She slid into the seat.

They drove to the crime scene.

A BMW sat in a tree-lined drive. Madison walked over to it, so alarmed by the cold, dark sensation sweeping over her that she nearly backed away. Only the memory of Mrs. Peterson’s tearful appeals kept her moving.

Then she stood still.

She closed her eyes. She had a vision of night; of a feeling of anger. She could hear breathing, controlled, growing heavier. Mr. Peterson. She saw his hand, saw the weapon he held as he carefully, angrily moved around the BMW toward the large, shadowy figure trying to break into the car. She started violently as a second figure—unnoticed until then—suddenly stepped from the shadow of a large palm tree to slam his arm down on Mr. Peterson’s. Mr. Peterson dropped the gun with a gasp. Madison cried out, feeling the pain in her arm—the same pain she had experienced in her dream. She hunched down, hugging her arm to her body. Seeing.

The man picked up the gun. Mr. Peterson looked up at him. “Now, wait—” Peterson began.

The gunman, a tall, thin white man with a blond crew cut, looked down at Peterson and calmly pulled the trigger twice.

Madison felt the force of the bullets ripping into her chest. She didn’t cry out, but she clutched her breast, feeling the impact.

And the cold. The awful cold assailing Peterson as his lifeblood began to drain away…

And still she saw. Saw the killer turn with his shadowy companion and race across the street into a heavily overgrown vacant lot.

The killer paused and started to run back, but his companion stopped him, urging him forward again. Madison saw them run again, saw until the icy fingers of death eroding Peterson’s vision turned the picture to black.

Jimmy was at her side, helping her up, trembling himself. “I shouldn’t have done this. Jesus, look at you. You’re soaking-wet, shaking…”

She shook her head vehemently. “I’m all right. I’m all right. Honestly.” She hesitated. “I can give you a description of the killer.”

Jimmy ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m not sure I believe this myself. How am I going to get anyone else to believe that you can…see things?”

“Cops do make use of…of…” she began, but broke off, wincing.

“Psychics,” Jimmy supplied.

She shook her head. “I’m not psychic. This has only happened to me twice. But I can give an artist a good description of the killer.”

Madison did give the police a description, and an artist created a damned good sketch of the man.

Through the sketch, they found the man and brought him in for routine questioning. Thinking that the police had more on him than they did, he broke down and confessed to the killing of Earl Peterson. After that, Jimmy made Madison promise to call him anytime she had strange dreams.

But the next time she had such a dream, it was far more personal. And it changed her life.

Madison graduated from high school with honors. She intended to go to school in Washington, D.C., and major in criminology—just like Kyle, who had recently acquired his master’s degree and gone to work for the FBI.

Kyle came to her graduation. They hadn’t seen much of each other in recent years; he had been away, and Lainie’s death had more or less split up the “family.” But he came to her graduation, along with all her other assorted siblings.

He brought his brand-new wife. Her name was Fallon, and she was perfect for Kyle, being perfectly beautiful. He was so tall, dark, well-muscled and good-looking; she was petite, blond, amber-eyed, slim and hourglass-shaped. Madison was surprised to find she wanted the woman to turn out to be a bimbette; however, she wasn’t. She, too, had just gotten her degree and had taken a job with the Smithsonian. She was sweet and charming, and Madison had to admit to liking her very much. She told herself that she would have been incredibly critical of any woman clinging to Kyle’s arm, because he was her…No. Because he was Kyle. And though she told herself that she didn’t have a crush on him, she did. She was jealous.

That night she slept with Darryl Hart for the first time. Darryl was madly in love with her and intended to follow her to the same university. She was the envy of all her friends.

He did everything right. And though it was slightly painful, it wasn’t horrible. It just wasn’t what she had read about, though Darryl assured her that it got better for women.

She certainly hoped so, though she tried very hard not to let him know just how disappointed she was. Darryl was a good guy.

She dated him for her first three years of college.

Then…she had another dream.

She had known that Fallon was expecting a baby. She and Kyle lived relatively near one another—she in Georgetown, he in a suburb in Maryland, just outside downtown D.C.—but she avoided him. She and Darryl and Kyle and Fallon had met for dinner a few times, and everyone had had a great time—except her. So she made excuses not to see them. She told herself that she was a bitch, a horrible person. She should be happy for Kyle and Fallon. Kyle was her friend. He had helped her through the worst period of her life, so it was natural for her to feel a strange kind of dependency on him. It wasn’t a crush. She needed to appreciate Darryl. He was even-tempered. He adored her and was unfailingly considerate. He was handsome, built like a young Adonis. She did appreciate him.

Together, they were perfect.

She was with Darryl when she had the dream about Kyle and Fallon.

It was terribly uncomfortable. It was almost as if she were with them. In their bedroom.

Fallon was on her side of the bed, tossing and turning. She was hugely pregnant, round as a tomato, yet still beautiful, her blond hair a tangled fan around her delicate, pinched features. She was racked with pain.

Kyle, at her side, was up, trying to help her, support her. “It must be the baby. We’ve got to get to the hospital.”

“It’s too soon, almost two months too soon!” Fallon cried.

“But you’ve been sick. We’ve got to get you there now.” He stood, naked. Muscled, tanned. In her dream, Madison tried to look away, but she couldn’t. It was as if she were there.

He dressed hurriedly, eschewing socks and underwear, slipping into his jeans and a T-shirt, and sliding his feet into his loafers while he dialed the phone. Fallon was distressed that he’d called for an ambulance, but he told her, “Babe, you’re burning up. We need some help, fast.”

Madison felt Fallon’s heat. She was burning, burning, burning…like a fire. But there wasn’t pain, there was just heat. And Kyle was there, holding her hand. Fallon was happy to feel his hand in hers, it was just that the heat was so terrible, and then she was shivering, hot and cold, hot and cold….

“Madison, Madison!”

She started, her eyes flying open. Darryl was shaking her awake, looking concerned.

“Madison, honey, you’re having a nightmare. You have to wake up. Madison, what is it? What’s wrong?”

She was soaked. She’d kicked the covers away. Darryl had his arms around her, and instinctively she clung to him in return.

“Want to tell me about it?” he asked her.

“No, no, it was nothing. I’m okay. I, uh, thanks. Thanks, Darryl. You’re great.” She kissed him. But when he wanted to take it further, in his efforts to soothe her, she curled away from him, a nagging sensation of worry refusing to leave her.

Three days later, a message from one of Kyle’s buddies at the FBI on their answering machine told her that her dream had been real. Fallon had died as the result of complications from a virus, along with her premature, stillborn daughter. The funeral was Friday, in Manassas, Virginia.

Madison’s entire family attended the funeral. Her own father had always gotten along exceptionally well with Kyle and Rafe, and Jordan Adair and Roger Montgomery still remained friends. Darryl, naturally, attended with Madison.

Kyle looked like hell. He wasn’t quite twenty-six, but he’d already acquired a few silver strands of hair at his temple. His grief was terrible. Madison felt numb.

In church, she remained on her knees, head bowed, through most of the ceremony. She wondered if she might not be a terrible human being, if her jealousy might not have killed Fallon. The logical side of her brain tried to assure her that it couldn’t be so, but she still felt somehow responsible, and it was an incredibly bad feeling. She wanted to run away.

She had only a few moments alone with Kyle. He came to her while she was kneeling by the coffin during the family’s last viewing.

He knelt at her side, and she tried very hard not to cry while he adjusted the prayer book in his dead wife’s hands. “At the end, she told me that you knew,” he said suddenly. He stared at her in a way that gave her chills. “She said you were with us, that she was glad you were there. She told me I should look out after you.”

He wasn’t staring at her, though, as if he wanted to look after her. He was, in fact, staring at her as if she were a demon straight out of hell, as if he wished she would get as far away as possible from the beloved body of his wife.

Madison stared at him in return. “I have no idea what she meant,” she lied. “I’m sorry, Kyle. I’m so, so sorry.”

“You have no idea?” he repeated. And his voice was deep, rumbling with a strange anger. “What kind of a witch are you, Madison?” she thought she heard him whisper. And she saw his hands, folded prayer-fashion over the coffin now, tighten. Tighten with power and anger. Then he stretched his fingers out, as if aware of his terrible tension. He stared at them, handsome face taut with grief, blue eyes glittering. His hands slowly began to clench again, as if he would like to wind them around her neck, as if he, too, wondered if she couldn’t somehow be responsible….

“No!” Madison whispered beneath her breath, then hurried from his side. She forced herself to go through the funeral and over to Kyle’s house, where friends and family gathered after the service. When she said goodbye to Kyle and Roger, who stood at his side, she said it with a new sense of finality.

Madison immediately changed her major from criminology to communications. She’d always avoided acting, because of her mother, and writing because of her father, but she discovered she had a flair for photography, and though she had avoided modeling because of Lainie, she found herself giving in to friends in the school of photography who needed help putting together portfolios for job interviews.

On a spring break trip to Las Vegas, she married Darryl. Nine months later to the day, she gave birth to Carrie Anne Hart.

Darryl went to work for an engineering firm in Fort Lauderdale. Madison did runway modeling and an occasional photographic shoot while being a mom and working on her own photography.

Two and a half years after their marriage, Darryl came home to find Madison in tears. He wanted to know what was wrong. There was nothing wrong, she said. She was wrong. Their marriage was wrong. He was wonderful, but she didn’t love him the way that she should.

Well, he wasn’t so wonderful, he told her. Then he admitted to having an affair with one of his file clerks.

Madison wasn’t sure why she was so furious, when she was appalled at herself for never having really loved Darryl. He wanted to patch things back together. He was so contrite that it was terrible.

In the end, oddly enough, they managed to part as friends. Good friends.

But Darryl accepted a job offer in the D.C. area. He needed to start over; she understood.

When all three of them could manage it conveniently, Madison saw to it that Carrie Anne went to stay with her father for a few days to a week. On those occasions, Madison began to accept more and more modeling jobs. While she was off on location in the Keys on one of them, she and some of the other models got a little giddy on a drink the bartenders were calling a Storm Front. She was surprised to find herself singing on stage with the hotel’s poolside band, and even more surprised to discover that she was good.

She was alarmed when one of the photographers showed her a few of the pictures he had taken while she was performing.

She looked exactly as Lainie had looked before her death. Long, thick auburn hair, large, bright blue eyes. She was taller, about five-foot-eight, but her face was Lainie’s classic oval, her nose, her mouth…just like Lainie’s. She had loved her mother, even though she hadn’t wanted to grow up to be her, wild, headstrong, going through husbands like toilet paper, heedless of the feelings of others….

Joey King, leader of the hotel band, wanted her to take a job with them. He was young, excited.

“We’re on the brink of something really good happening. I’ve sold some of my songs, we’ve had the big music people down to see us—”

Madison finished her drink and stood. “Joey, I don’t want to be a performer. I have a daughter. I have a career that’s going better than I actually wanted it to.”

“Because you look like your mother,” he said.

She stared at him, and he shrugged.

“Sorry, but she was famous. I’ve seen lots and lots of pictures of her, and you do look just like her. Is that why you don’t want to perform?”

“Joey, honestly, I just don’t want to go out on the road—”

“All right, all right, no going on the road, I promise.”

“Groups can make it or break it on the road,” she reminded him.

“I have a wife and two kids myself,” he told her. “Lots of groups have survived nicely just by doing local gigs and being studio musicians, and we have some great studios here. My sizzling desire for fame and fortune has been somewhat dampened by the reality of life,” he added dryly. “So, would you do a few demos with us? Would you sing live with us now and then, when we’ve got some of the suits in the audience?”

His flames might have been dampened, but he was still a determined dreamer. And she liked him. He was blunt and honest, not to mention she’d had fun singing with the band.

She shrugged. “Sure,” she told him. “Sure…”

Madison closed her eyes for a moment, then swung her legs over the side of the bed. Time to stop thinking about the past. Time to get moving.

Life had settled into a pattern for her, and she was happy, she told herself firmly

Well, okay, maybe not completely happy—she was too restless to be happy. She was a young divorced mom living in the same city as most of her family, so she had people who loved her around her—yet she was independent.

There were still the dreams, and when they came, she called Jimmy. But the dreams weren’t all that frequent, and she was resigned to having them. Sometimes she would go with Jimmy to a crime scene, and sometimes she was able to get a feel for something, or have a flash of insight. She was seldom tormented by the visions.

As she had been today.

She straightened her hair and skirt, and caught sight of herself in the mirror again. “Don’t whine, Madison! If you’re not happy as a little lark, at least you’re basically content in life!”

But her reflection remained grave. She felt restless. Uneasy.

As if, suddenly, things were going to come full circle.

As if the past itself were going to come back and haunt her life….

She gave herself a serious shake. She was working tonight. And come Monday, she would help Jimmy. She’d helped him before. Tonight it was time to have some dinner with Carrie Anne and her dad, if he was around, and get going.

Yet as she started for her daughter’s room, she still couldn’t quite shake an uncomfortable feeling. Not just the fear and pain the dream had evoked for a stranger.

An unease that curled around her heart…

Much, much closer to home.

2

Kyle knew that he fit in fine. He might be a “suit” from Washington now, but he was a Florida boy from way back, and he knew how to sit in a Key West bar and blend in with the scenery.

He was wearing cutoff jeans, scuffed Top-Siders and a worn short-sleeved cotton shirt, open at the throat and halfway down his chest. He wore dark sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, and he sat at a table located in the rear, where shadows fell, leaning back in his chair, legs sprawled on the chair before him as he nursed his beer. He could pass for a tourist—or a local. He guessed that he was actually somewhere in between. Jordan Adair owned this particular place, and it was popular. Folks coming down to Key West liked to have a drink at Sloppy Joe’s, famous as an Ernest Hemingway hangout, but they were equally anxious to fit in with the modern so-called “literary” crowd, which could include just about anyone. Jordan Adair wrote gritty suspense; his friends included mystery writers, true-crime writers, sci-fi and romance writers, those who dealt in history, in general fiction, in nonfiction—and those who were just so famous they could write books that would sell just because they were who they were. Along with the literary crowd, the place offered music—and the music was as varied as the clientele.

Jordan was not only cozy with the attorneys, cops and pathologists he consulted for his work, he was also friends with the film crowd, since a number of his books had been adapted for the screen. Tourists loved to flock here just to see who they could see, with the assurance that—should the crowd be quiet—the music would be good. At the moment, it was late afternoon, and a technician was just finishing fussing with the wires to one of the microphones.

Today, some of those who wanted to be seen were out. A young starlet with an entourage of bodybuilders was at the bar, drawing her share of attention from the tourists, as was Niall Hathaway, author of the latest publishing phenomenon, a hardcover about a priest brought back from a coma through the prayers of his congregation—and dreams about a life with the woman he had once loved and would love again. The book had been on the hardcover bestseller lists for over a year now; the movie rights had gone for well over a million dollars. Didn’t matter. The old guy just wanted to take his newfound wealth and go fishing. Key West was a good place to get on a boat with a rod and a few knowledgeable fishermen.

Kyle wanted to get out on a boat, as well. He wanted to get into the water, fish, dive. Lie back, crisp himself in the sun, drink beer in the breezy heat that usually fell over the water here. And he would. He didn’t have his own boat anymore, but Jordan had told him that the Ibis was his for the length of his stay, however long it might be. He hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to Roger yet; he hadn’t had much of a chance to do anything. He’d just arrived via a commuter flight through Miami International from Washington National, and it felt good just to sit in Jordan’s tavern. Key West wasn’t exactly home, but it was certainly home away from home. It was a good break before starting out in Miami with the local boys from Metro-Dade and Miami. He’d already done some preliminaries, but the Miami authorities had just turned to the FBI, so they were in the early stages of an investigation into what appeared to be a serial crime spree.

Odd, how life moved along—and it did move along. His memories of Fallon still hurt, but the pain was like that of an old knee injury; the flesh had healed over, but the joint would never be quite the same. Still, enough time had passed that he could smile now and then, thinking about her, and recollections of good times, of her smile, mingled with the pain, and sometimes it was okay. Still, it hadn’t been the tragedy of Fallon’s passing that influenced his life most strongly.