Читать книгу Maternal Instinct - Janice Johnson Kay - Страница 8

HOW COULD SHE have done something so stupid, so humiliating, so…undignified?

Nell stood under the shower with her face upturned, letting the hot water beat over her head as though it could cleanse her inside as well as out.

How could she face him again? How could she work with a man she’d let…

Nell moaned aloud at the fresh realization of exactly what she’d let him do. Never mind what she’d done.

Her head throbbed and she tilted it sideways to let the shower spray hit first one temple and then the other. The pressure didn’t help.

Nell reached for the soap and sudsed herself for at least the third time. Then she shampooed again as well. The rinse water was turning lukewarm. She’d been standing in there for an eternity.

But not long enough.

All the while she dried, got dressed and forced her self to eat a sandwich and drink a glass of milk, Nell’s thoughts raced in vicious circles.

She could only pray he was embarrassed, too, but what were the odds of that? Hugh McLean had a reputation with women. Word had it he had a different cute, petite blonde on his arm—or in his bed—every few weeks.

“A redhead once in a while,” Joe Redding had said admiringly. “But, damn, he picks lookers.”

Nell knew painfully well that she wasn’t even close to being a looker. But she was a woman, one more notch in his belt. Hey, he was drunk and in the mood, and she’d been handy. Handy? Who was she kidding? Randy, was probably more the truth.

There in her own kitchen, she flushed hot and cold. Her behavior had been so alien for the woman she’d become. It was as if too many beers had thrown her back to the wild teenager she’d been sixteen years ago, before she learned her lesson the hard way. Forget consequences, enjoy the now.

You feel good.

She whimpered and set down the half finished glass of milk. Her stomach was not enthusiastic about even something as innocuous as milk.

Would he keep his word, and not tell anyone? Nell didn’t know him well enough to be sure either way. The few times she’d had to work with him, they’d butted heads. She thought he was a sexist, macho jerk. Please, she prayed, let him also believe in old-fashioned chivalry.

She went back to the bathroom, brushed her hair into its usual severe, workday chignon, and carefully applied enough makeup to disguise some of the puffiness and blotches. Two more painkillers, teeth brushed and she’d done everything she could short of donning a mask.

Back in the kitchen she belatedly discovered a note from Kim carelessly tossed on the counter. It read, “Mom, Colin’s taking me to the spit. Call his cell phone if you won’t be home for dinner. I can eat with him. Bye.”

Nell crumpled the note. Great. Wonderful. Her just-turned-sixteen-year-old daughter was spending the day in the wilds with her entirely too ardent boyfriend. And what in hell could she, the single mother, do about it? Forbid a sixteen-year-old from dating? Hardly. Sign her up for summer camp? Uh-huh.

“What I wouldn’t give for year-round school,” Nell told the kitchen, and went out the door.

She was one of the last in the crowded briefing room at the station, for which she was grateful. She was able to stand in the back, unnoticed.

This wasn’t the usual beginning of her shift. She and McLean had been assigned, along with ten of the others present yesterday, to work this case. Four detectives from Major Crimes stood behind the captain. One, she was interested to note, was John McLean, Hugh’s older brother. He must have spent the night at the Joplin Building, because tiredness wore lines in his face that she knew weren’t always there, and his expression was bleak.

Nobody would mistake the relationship between the two men, although subtle differences in facial structure made Hugh handsome and his brother plain in a blunt, masculine way. Hugh’s bone structure was more defined, his nose thinner, his cheekbones more pronounced. Both shared imposing height and powerful shoulders and arms.

“The dead guy right outside the elevator on the fifth floor is our shooter,” the captain was saying.

While she was deciding which brother was sexier. Feeling a flush creeping up her face, Nell made a determined effort to block out awareness of Hugh McLean, sitting in the front row.

“A dozen witnesses have positively identified him.” Tiredness showed in the deepened lines on Captain Fisher’s face, but hadn’t succeeded in relaxing his military carriage or the iron in his voice. “He died of a self-inflicted shot to the head. As you all know, he’d been shedding his arsenal as he went. It appears right now that he used up his automatic rounds on the lower floors. He started down the hall, shot one more victim, then headed back to the elevator. He might have heard sirens and realized he couldn’t walk out. Hell, maybe he intended all along to end it that way.

“His name is Jack Gann. He was not a former or current employee of Greater Northwest. We don’t know yet what the association was. We’re guessing he was pissed about a denied claim, but, hell, it could be something else. One of the victims may be an ex-wife, the boyfriend of his ex…. It’ll be your job to find out.

“At this point, we believe he was acting alone. We can’t yet be certain of that, either. His car is in the lot, but so are ones belonging to a lot of other people who won’t be driving them home, either.

“The coroner has wrapped things up at the Joplin Building. You know the drill. We need accurate floor plans, drawings, notes.” Captain Fisher paused, his penetrating gaze traveling from one of his officers to the next. “You will be acting under the direction of the detectives. When you’re done, I want to know every step the son of a bitch took. How did he get to the third floor that heavily armed without being noticed? Who did he shoot first? Second? Third? Why those victims? Were they the ones who didn’t hide fast enough, or were they chosen?” His voice became softer, colder. “I don’t just want to know what he did, I want to know what he was thinking.”

Nods all around. “Sir.”

“These are your assignments.” Like a school-teacher, he stepped from behind the podium and passed out papers. When he’d reached the back of the room and Nell, he added his usual roll-call closer. “Do your jobs and do them carefully.”

Nell was praying she and McLean had been assigned to hunt background on the shooter. Her stomach roiled at the idea of going back into the Joplin Building, of seeing again where the bodies had fallen.

No such luck. She and her new partner—her temporary partner—would be part of the team securing, searching and recording the crime scene.

She waited in the hall for him. He was one of the last out the door of the briefing room, presumably having stopped to talk to his brother. He’d hidden this morning’s excesses better than she had, Nell thought in disgruntlement, watching him approach. With his dark hair, vivid blue eyes and well-defined cheekbones, he was as rakishly handsome as ever. Right now his mouth was set in a hard line, but his jaw was clean-shaven, his eyes clear and his hair slicked back from his face. His crisp uniform fit his tall, muscular body the way it was designed to, a fact that she resented.

She tried very hard not to let pictures of the body beneath the uniform flash in her mind.

His expression was unrevealing when he reached her. “Ready?”

“Naturally,” she snapped. Did she look that bad?

“Do you want to drive today?”

Big of him, she thought uncharitably. They had to go—what?—ten blocks to the Joplin Building. No chance she’d screw up a chase or even a trivial traffic stop.

“You did fine yesterday,” she said waspishly, then was annoyed at herself for being weak enough to display sulkiness. Why give him a weapon?

He lifted a brow. “Fine.”

As they followed the rest of the officers down the hall, she wondered miserably what he was trying not to remember when he looked at her. Or, worse yet, what he was letting himself remember with secret pleasure.

Her cheeks heated in humiliation. Was he instead wondering how many beers he’d had to make him pull down his zipper for her? Flagpole tall women with no figure and hair of undetermined color had never heated his blood before.

She gave a stiff nod when he held open a door for her. Walking into the shadowy parking garage, she hated her awareness of his gaze on her back as he followed.

Damn it, she didn’t want to excite Hugh McLean, Nell thought fiercely. She didn’t like him. Last night—this morning…It was nothing. The stupid behavior induced by inebriation. The true embarrassment was discovering her behavioral control—her common sense!—could be so easily subverted.

Not until they were in their unit and pulling out of the garage did either speak again.

“Feel okay?” Hugh asked.

She felt like hell. “I’m all right.” After a too discernible pause, she added, “You?”

He shrugged. She looked away.

“Oh, hell,” he said suddenly.

“What?”

He hit the flashers and took a sharp left. “Idiot ran the red light.”

The driver of the low-slung Buick ahead had apparently not yet noticed the flashing lights. Nell radioed in the location and license tag number to dispatch.

“Violation?” dispatch asked.

She continued to give information while Hugh hugged the rear of the Buick and finally, briefly, gave a blast of the siren. For a moment the driver seemed to be giving thought to not stopping, but at last grudgingly pulled to the shoulder—without signaling. Hugh had a few choice things to say under his breath as he got out to go to the driver’s side window.

He came back shaking his head. “That woman is ninety if she’s a day. She called me ‘sonny.’”

His chagrin improved her mood. “You probably look like a kid to her.”

He held the license as though it were poison ivy. “Can you believe she still has one?” he said, passing it to her. “Doesn’t she have kids or grandkids to ride herd on her?”

“Would you let yours tell you what to do?” Nell asked, picking up the microphone.

Grandma—or Great-Grandma—turned out to have a dozen unpaid traffic tickets and outstanding warrants. Out of curiosity, Nell strolled back with Hugh to get a look at the feisty eighty-eight-year-old. So tiny she could barely see over the dashboard, she had delicate skin crumpled like tissue paper and vague blue eyes that sharpened when given the news that she wouldn’t be driving away from this stop.

“I drive just fine!” she snapped. “That light was yellow when I started across the intersection. You’re the one who needs your eyes examined, sonny.”

Hugh beat an undignified retreat, Nell hiding a grin as she followed. In the car, they waited for a patrol unit to arrive and finally handed her over with intense gratitude.

“I can’t throw a woman her age in jail,” the patrol officer was whining as they waved and pulled away.

Hugh’s hands relaxed on the steering wheel. “I need more sleep to cope with senile old ladies.”

“I feel sorry for her,” Nell admitted. “She’ll lose her license this time for sure.”

He gave her an incredulous stare. “She’s a menace with that damn boat of a car.”

“But that car is her freedom.” Nell caught his gaze and interpreted it correctly. “Of course we have to take her license. I’m not arguing! I’m just saying I sympathize with her. Who wants to wake up one day and say, ‘Gosh, I’d better not get myself to the store or the doctor anymore. I’ll just depend on other people’s kindness from now on.’”

Hugh squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Can’t we just make a traffic stop without delving into the life problems of everyone we ticket?”

She opened her mouth, closed it. Opened it again. “I’m just saying…”

“I know what you’re saying,” he snapped. “I heard you.”

They drove the five blocks to the Joplin Building in thick silence.

“Oh, hell,” said Hugh again, as it came in sight. The sidewalk was thick was reporters who surged toward the police car before it came to a stop.

“Were you on the SWAT team that first went in yesterday?” reporters yelled. A forest of microphones surrounded Hugh and Nell as they moved grimly toward the front steps. “Can you describe the scene?”

“Was there one killer? Can you confirm rumors that he’s dead?”

“We’re working a crime scene,” Hugh said. “I’m sorry, we can’t comment.”

They broke out of the crowd and gratefully ducked under yellow tape, Nell a little shaken by the shoving bodies, the heavy TV cameras and the urgency of the demands. Port Dare had catapulted into the national news.

The instant they walked into the lobby, Captain Fisher stalked toward them. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Old lady ran a red light right in front of us,” Hugh said expressionlessly. “Sir.”

“Goddamn it, you’re not on patrol!”

Hugh said nothing; of course they couldn’t have let a serious violation like that slide.

He scowled, looking more than ever like a bulldog. “Get the hell upstairs for your assignment!”

They were able to ride one of the elevators; the second was still disabled until the evidence techs were done with it. Alone with him, Nell stared straight ahead as if she were enclosed with a stranger and meeting his gaze was bad manners if not dangerous. But when the doors began to open, she hesitated, not in any hurry to offer her memory banks a second glimpse of the horrors she’d gotten drunk to forget.

It seemed to her that Hugh hesitated as well. His back looked rigid when he went ahead of her. Nell took a deep breath and made herself buck up—she was a police officer. Which didn’t prevent a wash of relief when she saw that the receptionist’s body no longer slumped over her broad desk.

A bagged body on a gurney was waiting to be wheeled onto the elevator.

“What’s the count?” Hugh asked a lieutenant, nodding at the gurney.

“Twelve.” His mouth twisted. “Another one died this morning at Mercy.”

Nell let out a breath. To have miraculously survived the carnage and then die on an operating table or in a hospital bed seemed unbearably cruel.

“Three others are in critical condition.”

“All for what?” Hugh asked. He made a sound in his throat. “Let’s get busy.”

They spent the next hours running tape measures, sketching rooms and hallways and the angles at which bodies had fallen or weaponry had been abandoned. No mysteries in the blood spatter patterns—all were consistent with the victims having been shot with automatic fire at close range.

Nell remembered to call Kim—via the boyfriend’s cell phone—to inform her that she wouldn’t be home for dinner.

“Is Colin taking you out?” she asked.

“Mrs. Cooper said I could have dinner with them,” Kim told her. “We’ll be chaperoned, Mom.”

Nell ignored the sarcasm. “Be sure and thank her.”

“Mo-ther.”

She sighed. “Sorry.”

Her daughter’s voice became tentative. “Are you at the Joplin Building?”

Hugh, waiting a few feet away, watched her, which made Nell edgy.

“Unfortunately.”

“Is it…is it really gross?”

Nell’s gaze was inexorably pulled to the dark stain down the hall. She stripped her voice of emotion. “That’s one way to put it.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’ve got to go, Kim. I won’t be in until late tonight. I assume we’ll be back on regular shifts tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Kim said, sounding subdued. “I love you, Mom.”

Tears stung her eyes. “I love you, too.”

Hugh’s astonishingly blue eyes met Nell’s as she stowed her cell phone. “Your kid?”

“Daughter. Kim’s sixteen.”

“Do you have others?”

Was he really interested? She couldn’t imagine.

Nell shook her head.

“You’re divorced?”

“Never married.” Let him make of that what he would.

She felt him studying her, but he didn’t pursue the subject. “I’m glad you can draw better than I can,” was all he said. “I seem to have two thumbs.”

She couldn’t keep a sardonic note from her voice. “Lucky thing women have some useful skills besides empathy.”

“I didn’t say—”

She cut him off. “I know you didn’t.”

The afternoon and evening passed in a blur. Flashes burst on the edges of her vision as the photographers worked. Grey fingerprint powder added its dour presence to the rust-brown stains on the carpet and papered walls. Nell’s head pounded and she worked in dogged silence. One office looked like the next, one hall turned into another. They were going to be here for weeks, she could see already. This was a crime scene of a size so far beyond anything they’d ever managed, it would be a miracle if they were done that soon. And if they didn’t screw up the preservation of evidence.

Not that there’d be a trial, Nell reminded herself wearily. This was all an academic exercise. The killer was dead, already executed by his own hand. So why go through all this?

She knew the answer, of course. At its deepest level, they were after the truth. Without all the puzzle pieces identified and locked into place, they would never have it.

More practically, the possibility still existed that there had been accomplices, or even that Gann had been misidentified and the real killer had walked out with the survivors. Terrified people weren’t the best witnesses. Nell remembered the body outside the elevator upstairs. The man had been middle-aged, middle height, brown haired, ordinary. Bizarrely, considering his mission, he’d worn a business suit indistinguishable from those worn by his male victims. Could a frightened claim rep diving for cover behind her desk be positive that Gann was the one spraying the office with automatic fire?

The captain let them go just before midnight and sealed the building. A smaller cluster of press still camped out on the sidewalk, but he waved his officers toward the lot and faced the oncoming horde. “It’s been a tough two days,” he said. “Sleep in an hour tomorrow. See you in the briefing room at eight sharp.”

“Big of him,” someone muttered behind Nell, on the way to the squad cars.

“I, for one, am going to be damn glad of that extra hour,” Hugh said, close beside her.

“Me, too,” she admitted, stifling a yawn, too tired to care that she could feel him breathing down her neck.

He opened his door, but paused to look back at the dark bulk of the Joplin Building. A crescent moon floated above it. Camera flashes went off as the captain apparently made a brief statement in front.

“I feel like a condemned man,” Hugh said, in an odd voice. “We’re going to spend half our working lives in there.”

She nodded, although he wasn’t looking at her. “The atmosphere is so…oppressive. No, creepy.” She shivered. “They say tragedies can soak into the walls and leave a trace presence. Do you believe that?”

He turned and stared at her over the roof of the car. “No. Damn it, don’t you know better than to let yourself think like that?”

She scowled back. “You can’t tell me this one didn’t hit you hard, too. Why else did you—” She almost strangled herself as she swallowed the rest of that sentence. Why else did you get drunk? Screw me? Forbidden topic.

“Of course it was upsetting.” His brows met in a forbidding line. “Contrary to your opinion of me, I do feel some normal human emotions. But I’ve seen too many crime scenes to start imagining shock and terror soaking into walls, for God’s sake.”

“There are places,” she defended herself.

They were damn near alone in the dark parking lot now.

“This isn’t on the scale of Auschwitz. Let’s not kid ourselves.”

She gritted her teeth. “Then what were you talking about? Feeling like a condemned man?”

“We’re grunts in there. You and I aren’t even cogs in the machine. We’re oil that makes the cogs turn a little smoother. We aren’t doing anything. Not anything useful. I want back on the street. I like action. If I’d chosen to spend my life with a tape measure in my hand, I’d be a carpenter.”

Why had she, for even a second, thought him capable of sensitivity to suffering or nobility of purpose? He was a five-year-old boy, who wanted to be outside bashing his toy trucks into each other.

As tired as she was, she wanted to throw up her hands and get in the car. Stubbornness made her argue. “But this is important. It’s the biggest crime that’s ever been committed in Port Dare. That ever, God willing, will be. Don’t you want in on that?”

“The slug is dead. There’s nothing to solve.” He shrugged and got in behind the wheel.

She climbed in and buckled her seat belt. “Is it? Are we so sure this Jack Gann was the shooter?”

“We’ve got so damn many witnesses, we don’t know what to do with them.”

“They were scared.”

Rocketing out of the parking space too fast, he said, “Captain says half a dozen pointed their fingers.”

“When showed a dead man who looked like the assailant.” Why was she arguing? There wasn’t any good reason to think this Gann wasn’t the shooter. She just believed in being sure. “Did you notice how little there was to distinguish him from half the men pouring out of an office building like this at five o’clock? I saw his face yesterday. I can hardly remember it now.”

“We were all shell-shocked by then.”

“So were those witnesses,” she reminded him. “Worse.”

He was quiet for several blocks. When she stole glances at his profile, it was to see his deep frown relaxing. “Yeah, I’ve thought about all that,” Hugh admitted. “Fingerprints will settle it for us.”

“I guess they will. Once Ballistics figures out which guns killed which victims.”

He grunted agreement. “I don’t envy them, but at least they’re doing something meaningful. I still say you and I are grunts. We’d do more good preventing the next crime.”

They pulled into the dark concrete garage beneath the station. Tires squealed somewhere on the floor above them.

“Where’s your car?” Hugh asked. “I’ll drop you off.”

She was reminded uncomfortably of the last time he had done this, but chose not to make an issue of it. “Back corner.”

He braked behind the Subaru wagon. “See you in the morning.”

Another yawn cracked her jaw. “Night.”

“You didn’t want to work with me, did you?”

The unexpected question startled her. Halfway out, she twisted around to see his face in the light from the overhead lamp. Nell considered and discarded several answers, but was too tired to prevaricate. “No,” she said. “We haven’t exactly hit it off.” Except in the back seat of his Explorer. “I can’t have been your first choice, either.”

“No. I don’t like to analyze everything.”

“Whereas I don’t want to be the kind of cop who blindly follows orders and doesn’t understand that he or she sometimes has moral decisions to make.”

He grunted. “Like letting an old lady drive away even if she is going to kill somebody sooner or later?”

“No.” Her patience was ebbing. “But how can we serve if we don’t try to understand the people we’re serving? How do you negotiate a way out of a domestic call gone bad if you don’t have a good idea what’s going through the guy’s head, or the wife’s? What’s she going to do? Why’d he go off the deep end right now? What’s riding him? You won’t make detective if you’re unwilling to explore human nature.”

“Detectives sit behind their desks,” he said carelessly. “I’ve turned down promotions.”

Disgusted, she said, “Yeah, I forget. You have connections.”

His eyes narrowed and his voice went silky quiet. “My brothers have nothing to do with my career. They know better than to interfere.”

“Then what? You want to ride patrol for the next forty years? Walk into holdups at convenience stores for your big excitement?”

Something she hadn’t expected to hear from him, of all people, was real passion. But there it was, a vibrant thread in his voice, despite the lateness of the hour and his hoarse tiredness. “What we do is real police work. We’re the ones first on the scene, the ones who come when people call. I care about what I do. I don’t see it as an unpleasant duty on the way to better things.”

Stung by the scathing tone of the last, she said quietly, “I don’t either.”

“No?”

“I’m curious,” she admitted. “I haven’t been involved in a murder investigation before. So I’m a grunt. I can see how the detectives work.”

Suddenly he shook his head. “I don’t know why I started this. Go home.” He looked ten years older than he had nine hours ago.

Nell hesitated, then got out of the squad car. “Good night,” she said stiffly, and slammed the door.

The car didn’t move, and she realized he was waiting chivalrously until she was safely in her Subaru and had started it. Pulling out her keys, she thought maybe he was gentleman enough to keep his mouth shut.

Her drive home wasn’t half a mile. Five years ago, she’d managed to save enough to put a down payment on a 1920s era two-story house in Old Town. The lot had consisted of weeds and a rotted picket fence; the house hadn’t been updated since the fifties. She’d paid for new wiring and plumbing and converted the top floor into a separate apartment, rented out to cover the mortgage. Friends had helped, but most of the labor of stripping woodwork, sanding and painting had been hers. She was proud of her little house. Single mothers didn’t have it easy.

Especially ones who gave birth at sixteen and had no support from the baby’s father. The day they released her from the hospital and handed a swaddled Kim to her, she’d gone home to her mother’s, but she’d known she couldn’t stay. She had never in her life, before or since, been so scared. Sometimes life wasn’t a bed of roses, but every single time she pulled into her driveway she felt a surge of pride that she’d come this far.

Owning a house was a symbol to her of the life she’d built from nothing.

The front porch light was on, as was the light over the stove in the kitchen. On the stovetop lay another note written in her daughter’s still childish hand: “If you’re hungry, Mrs. Cooper sent home a bowl of spaghetti. I told her you don’t take meal breaks when you’re into work. Also, I got bored tonight and made some banana bread. See, I even cleaned up! Love you, Kim.”

More tears threatened. Nell grabbed a paper towel and blew her nose firmly. She was an emotional mess today. Not that it hurt to appreciate what a good kid Kim was. Despite all of Nell’s worries, she knew her daughter was unselfish, kindhearted and mostly sensible.

After throwing away the paper towel, Nell took the plastic bowl of leftover spaghetti out of the fridge and stuck it in the microwave. She was starved. She just hadn’t realized it. Hugh hadn’t suggested a meal break and it hadn’t occurred to her that she needed one. At some point her stomach had settled its differences with the beer, thank goodness.

She sliced banana bread, buttered it and poured a glass of milk while she waited for the microwave to beep.

What a day, she thought, carrying the heated spaghetti to the table a moment later.

She tried not to think about the night before. It had been stupid, but she was human. Lesson: no more than one drink. Ever.

Better yet, don’t drink at all.

While she ate, her mind flitted from the crime scene and the shooter with the hole in his temple to the half a dozen minor arguments with McLean that had filled any empty nook in their shift. Why him? she asked herself in disbelief. Why not somebody, anybody, else? She hadn’t liked him by reputation, and she’d liked him even less after they’d worked together a couple of times.

Nell wanted to conclude that she didn’t like him any better now, but believed in strict honesty. He’d been…decent today. No leers, no innuendoes, no murmurs and grins with his buddies. He’d let her see a few moments of vulnerability, he’d been considerate in driving her to her car that morning, and he’d been efficient and fair-minded on the job even though he had apparently been chafing at their roles.

Maybe she’d survive their partnership. Maybe she could even forget what had happened in the back seat of his Explorer. Thank God there was no reason Kim would ever even guess that her mother had done something so impulsive, so rash, so wanton!

A little flicker of anxiety sparked in her chest. Kim wouldn’t ever have to know unless…

Nell froze with the fork halfway to her mouth. As if the spark had found gas fumes, it exploded into a painful ball of terror that immobilized her.

He hadn’t used a condom, had he? He was drunk, too.

Why had it taken her this long to worry?

Nell tried to breathe slowly, in through her nose, out through her mouth. Her period was due any day. Certainly by next week. Wasn’t it? She didn’t keep track, but she knew it must be. It was surely too late in the month for her to get pregnant. And what were the odds after one time anyway?

She didn’t have to worry. All those years ago, she and her teenage boyfriend had had sex for several months, sometimes using birth control, sometimes not, before she got pregnant. They had challenged the fates, instead of just flirting briefly with them.

She could not possibly be so unlucky.

Nell made herself take the next bite, but the worry had taken root and would not be pulled out until she had proof of her escape from calamity.