Kelly lifted a comb from the sink and started going through her wet hair. 'The sun has really lightened it up for you.'
'It took a while to get all the dirt out,' she said, relaxing to his touch.
Kelly struggled with a tangle, careful not to pull too hard. 'But it did come out, Pammy, didn't it?'
'Yeah, I guess so, maybe,' she told the face in the mirror.
'How hard was that to say, honey?'
'Pretty hard.' A smile, a real one with warmth and conviction.
Kelly set the comb down and kissed the base of her neck, letting her watch in the mirror. Kelly got the comb back and continued his work. It struck him as very unmanly, but he loved doing this. 'There, all straight, no tangles.'
'You really ought to buy a hair-dryer.'
Kelly shrugged. 'I've never needed one.'
Pam turned around and took his hands. 'You will, if you still want to.'
He was quiet for perhaps ten seconds, and when he spoke, the words didn't quite come out at they should, for now the fear was his. 'You sure?'
'Do you still -'
'Yes!' It was hard lifting her with wet hair, still nude and damp from the shower, but a man had to hold his woman at a time like this. She was changing. Her ribs were less pronounced. She'd gained weight on a regular, healthy diet. But it was the person inside who had changed the most. Kelly wondered what miracle had taken place, afraid to believe that he was part of it, but knowing that it was so. He set her down after a moment, looking at the mirth in her eyes, proud that he'd helped to put it there.
'I have my rough edges, too,' Kelly warned her, unaware of the look in his eyes.
'I've seen most of them,' she assured him. Her hands started rubbing over his chest, tanned and matted with dark hair, marked with scars from combat operations in a faraway place. Her scars were inside, but so were some of his, and together each would heal the other. Pam was sure of that now. She'd begun to look at the future as more than a dark place where she could hide and forget. It was now a place of hope.
CHAPTER 6
Ambush
The rest was easy. They made a quick boat trip to Solomons, where Pam was able to buy a few simple things. A beauty shop trimmed her hair. By the end of her second week with Kelly, she'd started to run and had gained weight. Already she could wear a two-piece swimsuit without an overt display of her rib cage. Her leg muscles were toning up; what had been slack was now taut, as it ought to be on a girl her age. She still had her demons. Twice Kelly woke to find her trembling, sweating, and murmuring sounds that never quite turned into words but were easily understood. Both times his touch calmed her, but not him. Soon he was teaching her to run Springer, and whatever the defects in her schooling, she was smart enough. She quickly grasped how to do the things that most boaters never learned. He even took her swimming, surprised somehow that she'd learned the skill in the middle of Texas.
Mainly he loved her, the sight, the sound, the smell, and most of all the feel of Pam Madden. Kelly found himself slightly anxious if he failed to see her every few minutes, as though she might somehow disappear. But she was always there, catching his eye, smiling back playfully. Most of the time. Sometimes he'd catch her with a different expression, allowing herself to look back into the darkness of her past or forward into an alternate future different from that which he had already planned. He found himself wishing that he could reach into her mind and remove the bad parts, knowing that he would have to trust others to do that. At those times, and the others, for the most part, he'd find an excuse to head her way, and let his fingertips glide over her shoulder, just to be sure she knew that he was there.
Ten days after Sam and Sarah had left, they had a little ceremony. He let her take the boat out, tie the bottle of phenobarbital to a large rock, and dump it over the side. The splash it made seemed a fitting and final end to one of her problems. Kelly stood behind her, his strong arms about her waist, watching the other boats traveling the Bay, and he looked into a future bright with promise.
'You were right,' she said, stroking his forearms.
'That happens sometimes,' Kelly replied with a distant smile, only to be stunned by her next statement.
'There are others, John, other women Henry has... like Helen, the one he killed.'
'What do you mean?'
'I have to go back. I have to help them... before Henry - before he kills more of them.'
'There's danger involved, Pammy,' Kelly said slowly.
'I know... but what about them?'
It was a symptom of her recovery, Kelly knew. She had become a normal person again, and normal people worried about others.
'I can't hide forever, can I?' Kelly could feel her fear, but her words defied it and he held her a little tighter.
'No, you can't, not really. That's the problem. It's too hard to hide.'
'Are you sure you can trust your friend on the police?' she asked.
'Yes: he knows me. He's a lieutenant I did a job for a year ago. A gun got tossed, and I helped find it. So he owes me one. Besides, I ended up helping to train their divers, and I made some friends.' Kelly paused. 'You don't have to do it, Pam. If you just want to walk away from it, that's okay with me. I don't have to go back to Baltimore ever, except for the doctor stuff.'
'All the things they did to me, they're doing to the others. If I don't do something, then it'll never really be gone, will it?'
Kelly thought about that, and his own demons. You simply could not run away from some things. He knew. He'd tried. Pam's collection was in its way more horrible than his own, and if their relationship were to go further, those demons had to find their resting place. 'Let me make a phone call.'
'Lieutenant Allen,' the man said into his phone in Western District. The air conditioning wasn't working well today, and his desk was piled with work as yet undone.
'Frank? John Kelly,' the detective heard, bringing a smile.
'How's life in the middle of the Bay, fella?' Wouldn't I like to be there.
'Quiet and lazy. How about you?' the voice asked.
'I wish,' Allen answered, leaning back in his swivel chair. A large man, and like most cops of his generation, a World War II Veteran - in his case a Marine artilleryman - Allen had risen from foot patrol on East Monument Street to homicide. For all that, the work was not as demanding as most thought, though it did carry the burden associated with the untimely end of human life. Allen immediately noted the change in Kelly's voice. 'What can I do for you?'
'I, uh, met somebody who might need to talk with you.'
'How so?' the cop asked, fishing around in his shirt pocket for a cigarette and matches.
'It's business, Frank. Information regarding a killing.'
The cop's eyes narrowed a bit, while his brain changed gears. 'When and where?'
'I don't know yet, and I don't like doing this over a phone line.'
'How serious?'
'Just between us for now?'
Allen nodded, staring out the window. 'That's fine, okay.'
'Drug people.'
Allen's mind went click. Kelly had said his informant was 'somebody,' not a 'man.' That made the person a female, Allen figured. Kelly was smart, but not all that sophisticated in this line of work. Allen had heard the shadowy reports of a drug ring using women for something or other. Nothing more than that. It wasn't his case. It was being handled by Emmet Ryan and Tom Douglas downtown, and Allen wasn't even supposed to know that much.
