Page 24 (1/2)

The doorbell rang and she nearly juet it for you if I could," he said

She ran to the door and looked through the peephole It was David She threw the door open

"This isn’t so," he said

"Come in Come on in," she said

"You sure?"

She frowned "Of course"

He stepped in "All the old crap is being thrown back up," he told her

"I know"

"You still believe in me?"

"Unconditionally," Katie said

He smiled, closed the door and drew her close to hied to get et a few of my own pictures"

"Oh?" she seemed worried

"Hey, I went to school for this I took a couple of courses in crime-scene work"

"So-you think that this will help you find out what happened in the past?" She stared at him frankly She stepped back and put her hands on her hips as if she were indignant for him In no way did it seem to occur to her that it was just too odd that this had happened right after he had returned

"It’s either the same killer or a copycat," he said "Thanks to Pete, I won’t have to rely on the memory of what I just saw"

"Shall I send out for so-"

"No," he said "Let’s head out"

"On the streets?" she asked, surprised

"Duval Street, as athen, and I sure as hell didn’t kill a stripper I’ve never seen before Hell, if they’re going to coht out where they can do it!"

"He doesn’t look overly agitated," Bartholomew commented He was perched on a stool next to her at an open-air bar on Duval; David had just been cornered by the press again

He could have gone into public speaking, Katie thought HeKey West after Tanya’s death because his hoed to make the Becketts sound like the typical Arandmother, affection was apparent in his tone He admitted that he didn’t understand how such bizarre ht be a copycat at work, especially since some aspects of the crime seemed to be different He had every confidence that the police would find the killer Soht they would find a killer nohen they hadn’t done so years ago Soested that they wouldn’t try as hard Stella Martin had been a stripper and probably a prostitute

David clearly stated that he was sure the police would work every bit as hard; a human life was a human life, none less valuable than others

Katie sipped a ru to him Bartholomeatched hi," he htened in his seat "Look There"

Katie looked down the bar There was a wo at the end of the counter, shaded by so," she said

"I don’t know her name, but she works at the strip club"

"And you know this because…?" Katie asked

"Well, I may be dead, but I can watch!" Bartholomew said

Katie stood up and canize the woman Strippers, however, had a tendency to be very transient She

"Hi," Katie said, sliding up on the stool beside her "Are you all right?"

"I’ to act as if she hadn’t been crying She seemed defensive And scared

"I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you You just appear to be very sad, as if you’d lost a friend, and I just wanted to say that I’ her swizzle stick in her pink drink; she looked over at Katie She nodded slowly "Yes, ere friends Stella had a few bad habits, but…she liked money She wanted to travel one day-far, far from Florida She was born in a trailer up in Palatka, and she alanted to get out of the state"

"Well, we can iine heaven as a place far away, and ht have wanted to see"