She grew very still in his arms. Her heart was against his. He could feel the slow, steady beat. He kissed her hair. “You okay?”
She nodded against his shoulder. “I miss Belinda so much. She was more my mother than our real mother was. Our real mother just stayed in her room all the time. She loved to eat Godiva chocolates. And she was so beautiful—both Belinda and my mother. I was the plain one, but neither of them held it against me, well, maybe Belinda didn’t like me so much when I was older. I don’t know why.
“I know Douglas had never hit her before, she told me he hadn’t. I asked her why he’d hit her this time, why he’d humiliated her.”
“What’d she say?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. She just stood there, shaking her head. She told me I wouldn’t understand. That it had nothing to do with me, that I was to forget it.
“I was confused, then angry. I told her I was nineteen, that I wasn’t a kid anymore, that I could play the piano and she couldn’t. She laughed at that, but it hurt her rib to laugh, so she stopped really fast. She told me to forget this, that it wasn’t important in the scheme of things. She told me to go away. I went to Napa Valley with some friends. I never saw Belinda again.”
“How did you know that Belinda had a miscarriage?”
“I don’t remember. Someone must have told me. But no one seemed to know about it. It isn’t in the medical reports or the autopsy report. I just don’t remember.”
“But somehow you followed her through the warehouse, followed her to her death, saw everything she saw, felt her terror, felt her die.”
Dr. Bowers looked as if she wanted to leap on Savich, but he just shook his head. Lacey was stiff now, withdrawn from him, but he didn’t say anything more, just held her, rocking her slightly, back and forth.
“How could I have possibly been there? It doesn’t make any sense. I was in St. Helena when my father called me. I left San Francisco that very day I’d spoken to Belinda.”
“What did your father say when he called you?”
“He said that Belinda had been killed by the String Killer. He told me to come home. I went. There wasn’t anything more.”
“Did your father tell you about her miscarriage?”
“I don’t remember.”
“When did you have the first dream?”
“Six weeks later. He was stalking me, and I knew he was there, only there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t get away from him. I yelled at him, ‘Why are you here? What do you want?’ He didn’t say anything. He just kept coming closer and closer. I knew he would hit me on the head but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t get away from him. I felt helpless, and I was. He was right there, over me. The dream ended.”
“When did you come to realize that he picked women because they cursed and put down their husbands?”
“The dreams got longer, more detailed. Later, he told me, told me over and over. That began maybe three months later. He said in my ear just after he struck me, ‘You’re a filthy-mouthed little bitch, aren’t you? You curse and say all those bad things you shouldn’t be saying and you blame your husband and call him bad names. I’ve got to punish you.’
“I’ll never forget that, never. The dreams continued, got more and more involved until the one last night when I woke up just the instant before he killed me. I honestly don’t know how much effect the profiling papers influenced me and all my studies. There was a lot of gruesome stuff in the courses and I thought about him all the time, read all the big-city newspapers, studied other serial killers. But I don’t understand where this dream came from.”
“It’s there, Lacey. We’ll get it all out. It will just take a bit of time.”
“Dr. Bowers is right. It’s all there in that magnificent brain of yours, somewhere. We’ll unlock all of it, but no more today.” He kissed the top of her head, then said in that calm unhurried voice, “Do you remember if it was Marlin Jones speaking?”
He held his breath. She was perfectly silent, perfectly still. Finally, she said in a voice muffled by his shirt, “No, I can’t be certain.”
Or she couldn’t bear to remember. It was enough for now, more than enough. He said aloud, “I think we should pack it in for today. What do you say, Lauren? Has she had enough of the wringer?”
“I’d say so. Go watch the Redskins play ball. Eat popcorn. Forget it, at least for today. She’s still recovering. She needs rest. We’ll get at the rest of it in a couple of days.”