The Unknown Beloved(71)

“Any doctor drinking in this neighborhood and crashing in that apartment is hiding something.”

“St. Alexis is right across the street. Where do those doctors drink?”

“Not in the bars around here. Not if they are doctors in good standing. I’ve been in all of them, and there is a distinct clientele.”

“You say he’s hiding something. Maybe he’s simply hiding the fact that he drinks too much.”

“From who?”

“His wife?”

“Would you rather your husband come home drunk or not come home?” he asked.

“I’d rather he come home drunk,” she said, no hesitation.

“Yeah. I’m guessing that’s the way most women feel. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t. So I’m guessing it isn’t a wife he’s hiding from.”

“Sybil said Dr. Frank drank too much. That he was fired, and his marriage failed because of it. Maybe that man was Dr. Frank.”

“You don’t think Peterka has changed the locks in all these years? Peterka fires him but lets him access the building to sleep off a drunk?”

She shrugged. “Dr. Peterka is a good man. He looks out for the people in this community. He’s on the board at St. Alexis and is constantly raising money with the diocese for meals, medical care, and shelter for Cleveland’s poor. It wouldn’t surprise me if he went very easy on Dr. Frank.”

“A regular St. Peter,” Malone muttered. “But he’s a very foolish man if he isn’t running a tighter ship.”

“People aren’t dying in that apartment, Michael.” She said it with such confidence that he stopped pacing and scowled at her, even though he agreed with her.

“No?” he pressed. “You get something from that couch you aren’t telling me?”

“No.” She shook her head. “It was just as I said. It was unpleasant. But I’m used to that. My ability is unpleasant . . . often. The brush of a memory, the brush of a moment, that’s fine. But the layers of a life? It’s like peeling an onion. And I’d rather not do it.”

“You could have fooled me, kid,” he snapped.

She was quiet for a moment, studying him.

“Are you angry with me, Michael?”

“I’m angry with myself.”

“Because you let me come with you?”

“Yes! Because I let you come with me.” He walked to his desk and took out the notepad with his lists. He turned a few pages and found the list he wanted and handed it to her.

“Read this. And tell me what the Butcher’s victims all have in common.”

She looked it over quietly.

“Dani? Read it.”

“They all lost their heads.”

“They didn’t lose their heads.” He tapped the sentence she’d restated.

“They all had their heads cut off,” she amended.

“Yes. Correct. What else?”

“They were all relatively . . . unknown.”

“Yeah. Unknown. Down-and-out. Nobodies.”

“They are all people. Human beings. Please don’t call them nobodies,” she said.

“To him, that is what they are. Nobodies. No ties. No family. Nobody to miss them when they disappear. Many of them led miserable lives, filled with abuse and addiction, and they frequented unsavory places. He’s doing them a favor, you see. He’s giving them notoriety in death. He’s making people care. He’s making people notice what they often ignore.”

“He’s not making people care about the victims,” Dani argued. “He wouldn’t make them so hard to identify if he wanted people to care about them. He’s making people care about him. He wants them to notice him.”

He took the pad from her hands and threw it on the desk.

“Bottom line, you aren’t the kind of woman the Butcher kills, Dani. I’d like to keep it that way. So I won’t be bringing you to any unsavory places or putting you in danger again. I don’t care how pretty you are when you beg.” He was suddenly dying of thirst. He wrenched his tie from around his neck and tossed it toward the bed. It slid onto the floor and Dani retrieved it.

She rose silently and left the room. He could hear her splashing in the bathroom—most likely washing the sofa from her hands—but a moment later she returned smelling of his soap and carrying a glass of water that she insisted he drink.

“You didn’t put me in any danger, Michael. That man was not there to harm us . . . and no one has been killed in that apartment. They might have been drugged there, like Emil Fronek. But not killed.”

He gulped down the water like an obedient child, swiping at his mouth and glaring at her because she’d “read” his tie. “How could you possibly know that?”

“You said all the blood is drained out of the victims. Wouldn’t that be very messy?” she said simply, sitting down on his bed once more.

“Yeah. It would be,” he admitted, relieved that her answer was common sense and not voodoo.

“So where is the Butcher killing them?” she asked. “That might be easier to narrow down than who or why.”

“One of the detectives on the case is convinced he’s riding the trains and killing transients in boxcars.”