Читать книгу Bachelor Cop - Carolyn McSparren - Страница 11

RANDY LEANED BACK and propped his loafers on his desk.

Outside, traffic noises picked up. In another hour the February sun would rise, but he still had the squad room to himself. Since budget cuts, central precinct homicide detectives only worked days.

He was no stranger to interrogating rapists and convincing them he understood and sympathized. Although he didn’t. They thought it was about sex, the great god, orgasm. Actually, it was about dominance—assault with a deadly weapon. The rapist wanted to humiliate and destroy the victim’s humanity. He exerted total control. Even if his victim healed physically, she might never regain her sense of being in control of her life.

The fact that Streak had joined his class proved she was still fighting for her prerape sense of self. He would give her all the help he could.

He doubted his other class members had similar experiences, but you never knew. He glanced at the clock. Jack and Liz wouldn’t be in for a while yet. He had time to check out the other class members online.

Sarah Beth Armstrong, the first he checked, seemed like a nice old lady, but anybody could have a record.

When the screen lit up, he slammed his cup down so hard that coffee splashed on his desk. He grabbed a handful of tissues from Liz’s box and mopped it up before it could reach his keyboard. The desk had survived worse.

Sarah Beth had only a couple of speeding tickets, but when he followed the link, he found a homicide report. Eight years earlier her thirty-year-old daughter had been carjacked and killed by three nineteen-year-old gang-bangers. Sarah Beth, her husband, Oliver, and two children under eighteen were listed as next of kin. No husband listed for the daughter.

All three men were now serving life sentences without parole.

Sarah Beth seemed, what? Together? In his professional experience, the death of a child, particularly by violence, was the hardest kind of grief to survive. She’d had eight years, but that kind of pain and loss didn’t go away.

Next he checked Francine Bagby. Squeaky-clean, except for the 911 calls about noncustodial parents and drunks she’d already mentioned. He pitied anyone who went up against her with anything less than an antitank gun.

Nothing about Amanda Donovan, the lawyer, either. He recognized the name of her firm, however, as the biggest and toughest divorce firm in west Tennessee. No lack of material for nasty confrontations there.

Nothing on Ellen Latimer, aka Mrs. Claus.

Next he checked Lauren Torrance, the newlywed. Another surprise. In the previous year there had been three reports of loud arguments called in by neighbors. No signs of physical abuse, so no arrests.

Little Bunny was actually Gaylene O’Donnell Yates from Ittabena, Mississippi. Even though she was only five foot three, she’d won second runner-up for Miss Mississippi, and had married a plastic surgeon. The surgeon, Wilton Yates, had just won a malpractice suit over a boob job that had supposedly gone wrong. A disgruntled ex-patient was threat enough to send his wife to self-defense classes.

Her beautiful rack was probably silicone. Pity.

Finally, he pulled up Marcie Halpern. When she didn’t pop up, he entered variants of Marcie and found nothing, not even a speeding ticket.

His coffee was now tepid, so he added a dollop of hot from the carafe he had made, and drank it in a single pull. Even the women who didn’t show up in police reports probably had secrets they didn’t want revealed.

Randy had secrets, too. Without them, he wouldn’t have become a cop, and he’d be married with two-point-five children, a mortgage and a bass boat. He’d fall asleep on the couch after Thanksgiving dinner with the entire Railsback clan, instead of eating a tuna sandwich alone at his desk. He always volunteered for duty on holidays.

It was an excuse to avoid his family. He talked to his mother on the phone once a week or so, but never spoke to his father.

Maybe not all families were toxic, but his was right up there with Three Mile Island.

HELENA DROPPED Milo and Viola at the front door of their school on her way to her morning class. “Marcie will pick you up after day care. Tonight is my self-defense class. I’ll tuck you in when I get home.”

“Can we come with you?” Milo asked.

“Not tonight. Sorry.”

“Mo-o-om,” he whined. “I promise I’ll just lift the little weights.”

“I don’t want to go back,” Viola said. “Not never.”

“Then you go home with Marcie,” Milo snapped.

“Both of you go with Marcie.” She kissed them goodbye and watched Milo stalk up the stairs, while Vi bounced behind him. Helena had given up attempting to bribe him into waiting for his sister. He raced ahead to join his friends. Helena watched until both children disappeared inside the school.

She pulled out into the stream of cars that had disgorged their children. Traffic was sluggish, but she’d allowed extra time before her class. She turned on NPR, listened to five minutes of one disaster after another, then turned the radio off. They never seemed to report good news.

How could she keep her children safe, yet allow them enough freedom to grow? How could she teach them to avoid monsters without destroying their trust in decent people? How could she protect them from her own fears? Her panic attacks came less frequently and were shorter and less severe, but she still had them.

She forced herself to turn into Overton Park. This early she could drive the winding roads through the golf course and the Old Forest without meeting another car. Her sweaty palms slipped on the steering wheel, and she could feel the pulse thrumming in her throat. “You can do this,” she whispered.

In the two weeks since she’d begun to drive to work through the park, she hadn’t dared to turn from the main road into the Old Forest. She’d promised herself that today was the day. She would stop by the side of the road where she’d been found, maybe even get out and look at the spot. Demystify it. It was only a bunch of shrubbery.

February was its usual cold, dreary self, but she started the air-conditioning to dry the sweat between her shoulder blades. A moment later she switched it off. Her teeth were chattering.

She swung right onto the narrow forest road where the aged oaks and maples met overhead. Their leafless branches drooped over her car like threatening brown stalactites. Even in winter the lane was shadowy.

She inched along the road and studied the underbrush. It all looked so different. Was it here? Farther along? Behind her? On this curve? How could she not recognize the place she’d been dumped?

When a pickup drove into view around the curve behind her, she floored the BMW, barely braked at the stop sign onto the parkway and drove ten miles over the speed limit until she pulled into her allotted parking space at the college. Undoubtedly a commuter taking a shortcut, but she’d freaked. She hit the steering wheel hard enough to bruise the sides of her hands.

She turned off the ignition and took deep breaths to calm her heart rate. Her face in the rearview mirror looked as gray as though a vampire had sucked her dry.

The bastard had sucked her life dry. She would take it back. Milo felt he was in charge of keeping her safe. He’d seen her curled up on the floor of her closet. Vi was always wary, watching for signs of an imminent attack. Children should believe their mother was in control, invulnerable, there.

Sooner or later, the bastard would come to kill her. She felt it in her bones. Which was why she had to kill him first.

She lifted her chin and felt her pulse. No longer stroke territory. And, finally calm, she climbed from the car, picked up her briefcase and started up the stairs toward the liberal arts building.

She’d only downed a can of tomato juice as she left the house to take the children to school. Now her stomach rumbled in protest, so she detoured to the student union for a bagel and tea in the twenty minutes before class. Since juniors and seniors avoided early classes, she had the cafeteria to herself except for a couple of bleary-eyed freshmen.

She opened the bound notebook she used for her rape notes. At the top of a new page she wrote the same two points she’d written at the head of every page for the last six months. Find him. The police hadn’t managed in two years, with all their resources. What chance did she have?

She underlined the second item so hard the pen tore the paper.

Make him find you.

In the meantime, however, she had to try to teach thirty freshmen how to construct a five-paragraph essay, a task they should have perfected in junior high. Most of them acted as though she was teaching them ancient Greek.

She stopped in the faculty common room for another cup of tea to take with her to class. At this hour she was usually alone. This morning, though, Albert Barkley, full professor of American literature, sat in one of the worn blue club chairs by the window, reading the New York Times Sunday Book Review. He blinked at her over his glasses, then put the paper down and raised an eyebrow. “Something different about our Helen of Troy this morning. You must have launched another thousand ships.”

“Not even a kayak, Al,” she said as she poured her tea. He hated being called Al, which was why the faculty did it.

“There is something different about you. You seem, I don’t know, girded about the loins. Planning to go into battle?”

“Think of me as a female Daniel headed into the lions’ den,” she said as she emptied a packet of artificial sweetener into her Earl Gray. “One of these days maybe I won’t have to face English 101.”

“Only after I die and leave a full professorship open. Until then be grateful for your tenure and your paltry literature courses, and think of Idiot English 101 as sparing you hell after you die. You’ve already served your time.”

She walked upstairs to her classroom and thought that if Albert the Oblivious could recognize something different about her, she must actually be sending out different vibes. The self-defense course had been a first step in her plan to protect herself and kill the man she always thought of as “the bastard.” The second was to change her appearance. The third was to set herself up as a target.

“I will learn to use my softness against his hardness,” she whispered, and caught the startled expression on the face of a junior coming down the stairs toward her. That remark would be all over campus before lunchtime.

“IT’S A LEGITIMATE cold case,” Randy said. He’d made certain Lieutenant Gavigan and the others had read Detective O’Hara’s notes on Streak’s case before their morning meeting.

“No forensic evidence and no suspect,” Gavigan said. “Dead end. Gonna stay a dead end.”

Jack Samuels and Liz Slaughter sat in front of Gavigan’s desk. Randy rested a hip on the edge of the credenza.

“These guys don’t normally stop on their own, Lieut,” Randy said, and spread his hands. “I doubt this rape is an isolated incident. He’s either moved away, he’s dead or disabled, he’s in jail, or he’s raped others and will rape more.”

“Gotta be,” Jack said.

Liz had already assumed the pregnant woman’s position, with hands folded on her belly. “Can’t hurt to check it out. More cases equals more chances he slipped up, so we can catch him.”

“I get the feeling I’m being sandbagged here,” Gavigan said. “I’ll go this far. Randy, talk to O’Hara. After all this time new cases will have forced him to move your girlfriend’s assault to the back burner.”

“Not my girlfriend. I told you, she’s just a member of my class. If there’s anything she didn’t say during the original investigation, either because she chose not to or didn’t remember, I’m in the best place to tease it out of her memory. We agree on that?”

The other three nodded.

“I like Streak. I’d like to get this guy for her sake.”

“Streak?” Gavigan asked.

Randy explained.

“Prematurely gray hair?” Liz asked. “How come she doesn’t dye it?”

“I kind of like the streak in her hair, although I wish she’d fix herself up so she doesn’t look like a vagrant. And it’s white, not gray.”

“Bet you five bucks she didn’t look so frumpy before the assault,” Jack said. “It’s camouflage. She’s hiding, and blames herself. Why not? Everybody else probably blames her.” He shook his head.

“Assuming we reopen the crime as a cold case, what do you plan to do that the original detectives didn’t?” Gavigan asked.

“Same as always,” Randy said with a shrug. “Go over everything again from the beginning.” That meant revealing to Streak that he knew about her assault. She wouldn’t thank him for checking up on her. Might not thank him for reopening her case—and half-healed wounds—either.

“Long shot,” Gavigan said.

“All our cases are long shots,” Randy said. “Look how many we close.”

Liz and Samuels nodded.

“All right, talk to Detective O’Hara. He may already have info on similar assaults. And try not to step too hard on his toes, will you?”

“Thanks, Lieut,” Randy said.

“Now, how’s the Murchison killing coming?” Gavigan asked Liz.

An hour later, he closed the meeting.

As she passed Randy on her way to the ladies’ room, Liz said, “If you need somebody female to talk to this Streak, I’ll be happy to interview her.” She patted her belly. “Didn’t you say she has two kids? I can ask her advice about motherhood.”

“You meet her kids, you might be scared off motherhood.”

“Too late for that. Seriously, she might say things to me she’d be embarrassed to tell you.” Liz laid her hand on his arm. “We need to get this guy before he rapes somebody else. Anything I can do, let me know.”

“Ditto,” Samuels said from across the room. “I hate these guys.”