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But now he was staring at her, green eyes shining with tears. “Madison?”
“Madison…are you all right, Madison?”
She turned slightly. Roger was there, as well. Roger, who was openly crying.
“Roger, move aside.”
It was her father who was speaking. The Jordan Adair, a handsome man in his forties with a headful of long silver hair, a silver beard, dark, penetrating eyes. Leave it to her mother. Lainie would only marry men who were different: a rock star first, a writer, an artist. Jordan liked women in the arts, as well, but he didn’t seem to be quite as picky. He’d been through an opera singer, a stripper, a ballet dancer and Lainie, and had now broken the pattern to marry a sex therapist. He’d always loved Lainie, though. Always. And Madison knew that he loved her, too.
Like Roger and Kyle, Jordan had tears in his eyes.
She became aware of the sirens then. And the fact that the foyer was filling with cops. Roger moved away. She saw more of her family, her sister and her step-and half-siblings, standing awkwardly in the living room.
The girls, Jassy and Kaila. Jassy, her father’s daughter from his first marriage, was pretty and delicate, a dark-eyed blonde. Kaila was her only full sister. She and Kaila were both just like Lainie, redheads with blue eyes.
Her other brothers were there, as well. Trent, her father’s son from his second marriage, had sandy hair and Jordan’s piercing dark eyes. Rafe, Roger’s son from his first marriage, twenty now, was completely different from Roger and Kyle in coloring; his eyes were a misty silver, and his hair was a shining Nordic blonde. Like the others, he was pale now, scared-looking, quiet, his cheeks streaked with tears.
Kaila, just a year younger than Madison and nearly her twin in looks, suddenly began to sob. Loudly. Her knees buckled, but Rafe slipped an arm around her before she could fall.
Suddenly Madison remembered.
She began to scream and scream, shaking. There were paramedics at the scene, and even as she screamed and thrashed and tried in her hysteria to explain, someone came with a needle, pressing it into her arm. She could hear someone saying she couldn’t possibly talk to the police yet, and even if she could, what good could it do? Then the tranquilizer slipped into her, and everything went black once again.
This time she woke back at her father’s house, Kyle sitting by the side of her bed. She heard soft sobs coming from another room. One of her sisters.
“My mother is dead,” she whispered.
Startled, Kyle looked up. He stared at her compassionately and nodded.
“Someone killed her, Madison. I’m so sorry. Your dad is with Kaila, but I can get him for you if—”
“I saw it, Kyle.”
His eyes narrowed sharply.
“I saw it.”
“What do you mean, you saw it? You were in the hallway. Did the murderer run past you? Did you see who did it?”
She shook her head, looking for the words to describe what had happened. Tears welled up in her eyes. “She was terrified, absolutely terrified. She saw the knife. I saw it, too. I felt it.”
“Madison, you were forty feet from her room when we found you. Had you been in there?”
She shook her head.
“Then you couldn’t have seen anything.”
“I saw the knife.”
“Who killed her, then?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see a face. Just the knife. Just the knife, coming down at her. And I felt it. I felt it ripping into her.” She started to shake and sob again. Her mother had been killed, and it hurt as if a million tiny knives were digging into her heart. Lainie had been wild, headstrong and reckless, but Lainie had also been her mother, the one who held her, cherished her, laughed with her, shook her head over her, took the time to make red pipe-cleaner hearts with her class last February. Her mother was dead, and she didn’t think she could bear it.
Kyle didn’t try to say anything else. He sat beside her on the bed, taking her awkwardly into his arms while she cried and cried. Eventually her father came to the room and took her from Kyle, and she kept crying. She tried to tell her father that she had seen the knife, had felt Lainie die.
Her father was gentle and tender, and he pretended to believe her, but she knew he didn’t.
In the days and weeks that followed, the police investigated the murder with energy and zeal. They questioned Lainie’s various husbands extensively, certain that either Roger or Jordan had murdered her in a crime of raw passion. The tabloids picked up on the murder, as did the major magazines.
The cops talked to Madison. Lots of them. City of Miami cops, Metro-Dade cops. She told them that she had seen the knife, had felt her mother die. They didn’t believe her, either. But there was one cop who was at least nicer than the others. Jimmy Gates. He was fairly new to homicide, young, with warm brown eyes and sandy hair and a gentleness about him that soothed her. He wanted to know just what she had seen; he made her think back. When he questioned her, she saw the hand holding the knife. And she knew then that the killer had worn thin, flesh-colored gloves, like a doctor’s gloves.
She was amazed to realize what she could see, and also disturbed.
Roger was nearly arrested for the murder; her father was nearly arrested, as well. But there was no evidence that either man had killed Lainie. Kyle, Kaila and Madison had all been in the house at the time of Lainie’s death; Roger had arrived soon after. Kyle had immediately called Jordan Adair. In their questioning, the police said that Roger might well have killed Lainie, left by a window, disposed of the weapon and returned to pretend to find his wife. And Jordan’s home was well within walking distance, so he could easily have committed the murder, disposed of the weapon and reached his own house within a matter of minutes. Oddly enough, neither Roger nor Jordan accused the other. And with no evidence to go on, the police finally had to leave both men alone.
Time, Newsweek and People ran articles with headlines like Can Money Buy Innocence?—American Justice.
Jimmy Gates continued to talk with Madison. He listened gravely each time she went over and over what she had seen and felt. He tried to get her to see more, but try as she might, she couldn’t see beyond the gloved hand. Her father told Jimmy that he couldn’t torment her anymore, but she told her father she wanted to see Jimmy.
Two months after her mother’s murder, a suspect was arrested.
He was a crazy old derelict by the name of Harry Nore. Madison had seen him walking the streets of Coconut Grove most of her life. He begged at the corner of Bird and U.S. 1. Sometimes he shouted about Jesus and the Second Coming; sometimes he stood on the corner in the night and cried that Satan was coming and would devour them all with a sea of flame. He was first arrested for breaking into the house of a neighbor. He had stolen food, which the neighbor would have forgiven, but he had also filled his pockets with the family’s jewelry. The police found him in the kitchen, cutting bread.
With a butcher knife.
Harry Nore was also wearing a gold Saint Christopher medal that belonged to Roger Montgomery, which was what first made the police begin to wonder if the man was more than a thief. In examining the butcher knife Nore had been using to cut the bread, the forensic crews found minute traces of blood.
Lainie’s blood.
Nore’s fingerprints matched some of those lifted from Lainie’s bedroom. And he had a record. He’d already served time for killing his wife with a similar knife.
However, Harry Nore—the bug-eyed, lice-in-fested derelict—never went to trial for the murder of Lainie Adair Montgomery; he was judged incompetent to stand trial. When confronted with the murder, he began to rave. God had dropped the knife into his hat. God told him who was good and who was evil. He confessed to killing Lainie. In his confession, he stated that it was the devil who had come for her, because she had been one of his own brood. Lainie had been beautiful and evil, so beautiful that she led men to distraction and acts of perversion and violence. She was the devil’s spawn, and the devil had come for her. Looks could kill.
Harry Nore was evaluated and then incarcerated in a north Florida institution for the dangerously insane. He had a frightening, nearly toothless grin that was spread across the nation on the covers of the major magazines. He looked the part of a homicidal maniac, and the police and the investigators and the folks from the D.A.’s office were pleased, telling Madison and her family that at least they would not have to live with the agony of an unsolved murder. Nore had been found with the murder weapon, and he had confessed to the crime. Madison couldn’t understand why she didn’t feel as satisfied as she should that justice was being done. She wondered if it was just because locking Harry Nore away wouldn’t bring Lainie back. Or was it the presence of fingerprints, when she knew the killer had been wearing gloves?
The police were happy, and even Harry Nore was happy. He didn’t have to beg out on U.S. 1 anymore. He was fed three times a day.
Life went on. Madison had never thought that it could; but it did. She never stopped hurting for her mother. But though the ache remained, the raw, jagged edge of pain was dulled by acceptance. Even the sensationalism at last died down, and only now and then would a cable channel run a program about Lainie and her wild life and tragic death.
She and Kaila went to live with their father. Kyle, Jassy and Trent went away to different universities. Rafe finished at Florida International University and went to New York to work on Wall Street. Madison went to school, dances and parties, tried out makeup, shaved her legs, pierced her ears and temporarily dyed her hair a brilliant blue for Halloween. Seasons passed; she fell in and out of love. Her father married twice in three years. Both women were gone so quickly she barely remembered their names.
She began to forget that she had actually seen the knife coming down as it killed her mother.
Began to forget…
She was young, and life went on. She would always love Lainie, always remember her. But each day the little things began to matter more. Her sisters and brothers. Jassy, who looked after her. Kaila, who needed her. Rafe and Trent, who were gentle with her. Kyle, who was kind for a while, then infuriating, then strong, or gentle, when she needed help the most. Life had to be lived.
Pain and fear gradually faded.
But she was the spitting image of her mother.
And the terror was destined to follow her.
1
Twelve Years Later…
Madison felt the dream wash over her, and instinctively, even in her sleep, she fought it. She tried to awaken. No good—she was entangled in it.
She heard herself laughing, except that it wasn’t really her. She was the other woman, the woman in the dream. Pretty, auburn-haired, charming. Out for the night with a charismatic man. She was so excited. The feel of anticipation was exhilarating. They were going to make love. She wanted to. She wanted to be swept away, seduced, and when the weekend was over, she would finally share him, his name, with her friends. She would laugh and tell them what a wonderful lover he had been; at work, she would share intimate little secrets about how incredibly romantic he was, how erotic their affair could be, and she would be so happy, a woman in love with her handsome lover, a man who loved her, as well….
Madison knew that something was wrong. She screamed inside the dream, but to no avail. She was the pretty woman, and she was swept away by the excitement, the longing, the human desire to be touched and adored…. Oh, God, there was something so pathetic about being so needy.
The landscape swept by the car. Madison did and didn’t recognize it. She wanted to wake up, to stop what was happening, but she couldn’t.
The couple laughed and teased. She couldn’t see the man’s face, but she saw the woman’s beautiful dark red hair whipping in the wind as they drove.
Darkness descended. Time elapsed….
They were in a bedroom. A shadowy hotel room. She was laughing again, so delighted. They kissed, murmuring. He undid the buttons of her blouse…one by one…touched her, stroked her….
Madison wanted to look away; she felt like a voyeur, watching such intimacy. The redhead was willing to do anything. Anything to please her lover. Naked, they entwined on the bed. She let him turn her over, onto her belly. His fingers threaded into her hair, drawing her head back. She only twisted her head slightly, looking back at her lover, and it was then that she saw…
The knife…oh, God, the knife, descending…
Madison woke up, desperately choking back a scream. Carrie Anne was watching a video in her room; she couldn’t alarm her daughter. Oh, God, she was still shaking. She hadn’t had such a horrible, realistic dream in a very long time.
She looked at her watch. It was nearly five in the afternoon; she’d promised to sing tonight. She hadn’t intended to fall asleep, hadn’t meant to nap. And she certainly hadn’t meant to dream. And, oh, God, such a dream, so horribly, painfully vivid and terrifying…
She got up and paced her room for a moment, then dialed Jimmy Gates at the office. He was still at work.
“Madison?” he asked when she started talking, explaining.
“Jimmy, this dream…”
He listened as she talked.
“Jimmy, has anything happened? Do you know anything about what I’m telling you?”
He hesitated, and she winced. Yes, something had happened.
“I don’t know…. I mean, I’m not sure if the scenario’s like you’re describing or not, but…Listen, I’m on an investigation. I was going to call you anyway, after the weekend. I need your help. You’re spending the weekend down at your dad’s, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll pick you up at your place Monday morning. We can get going from there, huh? Try to have a good weekend. Give Carrie Anne a kiss for me, will you? Maybe I’ll even get down there. And don’t worry—there’s not a thing you can do for anyone now except yourself, okay?”
She nodded and hung up, then sighed, glad because the terrifying vividness of the dream was already fading. She hated it when she had such dreams.
She drew a brush through her hair. Well, she’d called Jimmy. She would do what she could, as she had a few times in the past. Thankfully, it was rare that the dreams came to her. When she could help, she did. Yet she knew that she couldn’t cure all the evils in the world. She couldn’t even cure all the problems in her own family.
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.
