Читать книгу Maternal Instinct - Janice Kay Johnson - Страница 9

IVY MCLEAN HAD aged shockingly in the past two days. When she arrived at Connor and Mariah’s house for dinner, the sight of her stooped carriage and the deepened lines in her face had all three brothers shooting to their feet. Hugh knocked over his chair and had to mutter an apology to his sister-in-law, Mariah. His big brothers beat him to their mom.

“Let me take your coat,” Connor said smoothly, the furrows in his brow betraying his perturbation. He cuddled his four-month-old daughter against his shoulder.

“What is it, Mom?” John asked more bluntly.

“What is what?” she retorted, tone cranky but rustier than usual. The voice of an old woman, which at barely sixty she wasn’t.

With a warning flash from her eyes at John, Mariah took over. “In their tactful way, they’re trying to say that you look as if you haven’t been sleeping well. Here, have a seat. Dinner will be on the table any minute,” Mariah said before heading back to the kitchen.

“How can I sleep, after such a terrible thing?” Ivy demanded querulously. “I expected John and Hugh to be too busy to come tonight, even if Connor can’t do anything useful.”

Her addendum didn’t need to be spoken aloud: And why aren’t you? The dig at Connor didn’t go unnoticed, either. Mariah touched his arm, but didn’t say anything.

“We’ve been working straight for two days.” The tiredness on John’s face was visible. “We have to eat, say hello to our families.” His gaze rested briefly on his wife, Natalie, who was feeding their one-year-old daughter a green glop Hugh presumed was pureed vegetables.

His mother sat heavily, as if she hurt. “Think of the women who won’t see their husbands again.”

John’s jaw clenched. He and Mom had always butted heads.

Figuring it might be well to intervene, Hugh bent and kissed her cheek. “We’re doing everything we can. Do you have any idea how many witnesses there are to interview? Besides, the son of a bitch is dead. All we can do is hope hell is a lot uglier than the pen.”

Her eyes beseeched him. “You’re sure he’s dead? The TV news is still hedging.”

“We’re sure.” Hugh’s voice was rock hard.

She sagged. “How can this happen again? Why would anybody do such a terrible thing?”

Connor, having put Jenny in the playpen, set a glass of wine in front of her. “We know better than anybody that there aren’t any answers.”

“Grandma!” Evan said from behind his uncle. “What’s wrong?”

“Is that all anybody can ask?” Her back stiffened. “I’m sure I haven’t changed at all.”

“You look sad,” the ten-year-old said. “Are you missing Grandpa more because of the shooting?”

Hugh laid his arm over his nephew’s shoulders, prepared to deflect the acid rejoinder he expected. Instead, her eyes filled with tears.

“Yes.” Her voice broke. She cleared her throat. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

“I’m sorry.” Evan left the shelter of his uncle’s casual embrace and went to his grandmother. He gave her a quick, awkward hug. “I wish I’d known him.”

She actually made the effort to smile, although her lips trembled. Unnoticed, tears overflowed. “I wish you had, too. You and all his grandchildren.”

Hugh’s gaze met Connor’s and then John’s. All three brothers backed unobtrusively away. As though sensing the need, Mariah appeared from the kitchen with a huge bowl of salad. She set it down, saw her mother-in-law, and exclaimed, “Mom! Let me get you a tissue.”

Within minutes, their mother had firmly blown her nose, mopped up the tears, and tried to insist on helping bring food to the table. Her two daughters-in-law squelched her, but did allow her to settle Jenny in her high chair.

Once everyone but Maddie, who was away at a soccer tournament, sat and began dishing up, Mom pinioned first John and then Hugh with a stern look more familiar to them than were her tears.

“Haven’t you learned anything?”

Evan and nine-year-old Zofie, Mariah’s daughter, listened with wide eyes.

“You know we can’t talk about it,” John said.

She sniffed. “Surely, with the press haunting your every move and talking to those same witnesses, nothing you discover will remain a secret for long.”

“True enough.” John grimaced. “Okay, here’s the bare facts. We know the shooter made a fraudulent claim. An insurance investigator found him out and the claim was denied. That’s the only motive we’ve determined.”

The pathetic part was, the claim had only been for a few thousand dollars. The fraud was petty, the claimant’s loss nothing that would ruin his life. He’d been incapacitated for a back injury, supposedly; the investigator had snapped photos of him playing an early morning round of golf at the county club. Why getting caught had enraged him to such a violent degree, nobody knew.

Yet.

“That’s all?” their mother asked in disbelief. “He was angry?”

John only nodded.

“And you’re certain he was by himself? He wasn’t used by a terrorist, or…” She groped for another villain, another explanation, and failed to come up with one.

“Most murder isn’t that sinister or purposeful,” Hugh said quietly. “It’s committed by troubled people who crack. Not by psychopaths or assassins or terrorists with causes. You know that, too, Mom. You’ve heard us talk over the years.”

“But…so many people,” she faltered.

“Another one died in the hospital an hour ago.” John’s jaw knotted. “A twenty-one-year-old filing clerk whose only sin was working in the claims department.”

Hugh had heard. The others reacted with pity and anger.

He withdrew from the conversation, brooding over his bad mood, a product of lack of sleep, frustration with how useless he felt on the job, and stunned disbelief at his own idiocy in screwing his new partner.

What irritated him was that he now had to watch every word, every glance, every nuance. He’d fouled up big time; he couldn’t compound his sins by being caught enjoying the sway of her hips in snug uniform trousers, by being crude or foul-mouthed, by criticizing her softheartedness.

And what a time to have to be on his best behavior! Hugh hadn’t lied to her: he had turned down promotions to detective several times. For the first time, he regretted it. If he were in Major Crimes, he’d have been doing something today, not laying out tape measures and making poor sketches.

His mother had every reason to be disappointed in him.

After dinner, John drew him aside. “You and Granstrom are on this again tomorrow?”

Hugh nodded.

“We’re going to pull a team off to interview witnesses. You interested?”

Remembering his outrage at Nell’s suggestion that he had been offered promotions only because of his brothers’ pull, Hugh looked back at John with a conspicuous lack of expression. “Doing a favor for your kid brother?”

“What in hell are you talking about?” John exploded.

“Why me?”

“Because you’re the best cop I know. Because I trust you. Why the sensitivity?”

Impatient with himself, Hugh shook his head. “No reason,” he muttered. “Sorry.”

“Granstrom okay? I don’t know her.”

Hugh opened his mouth to complain, but after an obvious pause closed it. “She’s fine,” he said shortly.

“Can she do the job?”

“She can do it.” He hoped.

“Then you’re with me in the morning.” John cuffed his shoulder roughly, nodded and rejoined his wife.

Hugh watched him hoist his daughter out of the high chair and into the air. She laughed joyously, and he laughed back with pleasure as uncomplicated.

A man could almost be jealous.

If he weren’t also feeling claustrophobic surrounded by Family, with a capital F. Men casually wrapping their arms around their wives, who fussed over Mom, kids everywhere, McLeans by birth or marriage. Hugh loved every one of them. The only loner, he also felt as if he didn’t quite belong.

As if he maybe never would.

He made his excuses, kissed his mother and escaped with intense relief.

KIM APPEARED, sleepy-eyed, as Nell was setting her coffee mug and cereal bowl in the dishwasher. Even with bed hair, puffy eyes and creases on her cheek, she was beautiful, with the innocent sexuality and bloom worshipped by the youth-crazy culture. Her hair was the color of honey shot with sunlight, her eyes were a sparkling blue, her pouty mouth sensual, her forehead a high smooth arch, her walk a leggy saunter.

Nell longed to see a hideous red pimple. Something, anything, that would repulse the boyfriend.

“What are you doing up?” she asked, with quick suspicion she tried to disguise.

Kim yawned prettily. “Colin and I are going to Lake Crescent today. Remember?” She saw that, no, Mom did not. “His uncle’s going to take us water-skiing?”

“Oh.” That did sound familiar. Wonderful. A long drive, just the two of them, and then Kim would strip to her tiny bikini. Colin would be panting to rip it off her by the time lake water beaded her warm skin. “Sorry,” Nell mumbled. “I forgot. It’s been a bad…” She clamped her mouth shut. “When will you be home?”

Kim ran her hands through her hair and yawned again. The hem of her T-shirt nightie rose alarmingly. “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I suppose we might grab a burger on the way home.”

Nell glanced at the clock. She had to go or she’d be the last to roll call again. Maternal anxiety held her in place.

“What’s happened to all your other friends?” She tried to sound casual. “You haven’t seen Polly in ages, have you?”

Kim opened the cupboard and studied the row of cereal boxes. “We talked yesterday.”

“You’re spending an awful lot of time with Colin.”

Her daughter chose a sugary, marshmallow studded cereal. “So? We’re having fun. It’s summer.”

“You’re together all day. Every day.”

“Mom, don’t worry.”

“How can I help it?” She gave another desperate glance toward the clock.

Kim saw. “You’re late. Go. I won’t get pregnant today. I promise.”

It had to do. Nell kissed her cheek and said, “Have fun. Just…”

“Not too much,” her sixteen-year-old finished for her. “Jeez, Mom.”

Kim was patient with her, Nell had to give her that. They had a good relationship; Kim listened to her.

So why did that not feel like enough?

Because Kim was a teenager, with all that entailed. Nell remembered far too well what that had been like. How her scope had narrowed until now mattered more than tomorrow. Her boyfriend hadn’t called, so her life must be over. Amid the great tragedies looming in this fantasy landscape, she had never considered the one that had befallen her mother and would bring her down in turn: teenage pregnancy. Nothing that had happened to her mother could happen to her, she’d thought dismissively. Nobody got pregnant just because they did it once. Or twice, or a dozen times. After all, they used a condom sometimes. Most of the time.

She could see the same recklessness, the same disregard, in Kim’s eyes when she soothed her mother’s fears. Kim must feel as if she’d heard it a thousand times. She would be tired of hearing it. Grandma had gotten pregnant when she was sixteen. Mom was stupid enough to do the same. What did that have to do with her?

Besides, she and Colin were in love. Like Romeo and Juliet. The forever kind. His calls, his laugh, his smile, his frown, were what mattered. Making love was as inevitable as the creeks swelling in the spring with snowmelt. She and Colin could do it once, or a few times. They’d be careful.

Oh, yes. Nell knew exactly how her daughter was thinking.

What scared Nell most was that Kim might look at her and decide that an early pregnancy wasn’t so bad. After all, Mom had a cool house and a good job. Kim didn’t remember the hard times, when Mom was skin and bones because she bought baby food with her coupons and paid the rent with her puny earnings and didn’t have enough left for food for herself. Or the nights they’d once spent in the car, shivering inside blankets, Nell terrified by every footfall on the sidewalk, because she had fallen behind on the rent and had too much pride to go home to Mom again.

Sometimes she wished Kim did remember.

In the station parking garage, Nell leaped out of her Subaru and raced across the concrete floor toward the elevator.

Disheveled and breathing hard, she slipped into the room just as the captain began to speak. He saw her, gave her a hard look. A flush of embarrassment joined the heat rushing had already brought to Nell’s cheeks.

Captain Fisher sent the patrol officers out first, then brought the Joplin Building crew up to date, ending with, “Granstrom and McLean, you’ll be with the detectives today. Everyone…do your jobs and do them carefully.”

Had Hugh pulled strings after all? Nell wondered, waiting for him out in the hall.

“What’s up?” she asked quietly, when he joined her.

His jaw flexed. “John chose us,” he said curtly.

“You don’t sound happy.”

His icy eyes met hers. “I’ll do my job, either way.”

She had to scuttle to catch up with his long stride. “Hey!” He didn’t slow down. “Why do you have a burr up your—”

Hugh stopped so suddenly she slammed into the hard wall of his back. He swung around, teeth set, and gripped her upper arms. Eyes glittering, he said, “I knew exactly what you’d think. No, I didn’t ooze up to my brother and beg to be given a choice detail. He came to me. End of story.”

“I didn’t say—”

“You thought.” He released her so suddenly she staggered.

“We have a briefing,” he said unemotionally, and stalked off.

Profane and even obscene descriptions of her new partner presented themselves for her tongue’s pleasure, but she had the self-control not to speak a one. Instead, she marched behind him into a smaller conference room, where John McLean and his partner had charts spread over the large table. Others were crowding in, too.

“Welcome Officers Granstrom and McLean,” Hugh’s brother said, with a brisk nod. “Okay, here’s where we’re at, folks. Four hundred and forty-two people work in the Joplin Building. We’ve managed so far to talk to fifty-four. We need detailed recollections, before they’ve all watched so damn much TV they start telling us what they heard and not what they experienced themselves.”

More nods; everyone knew the tricks memory played.

“We’ve broken them down by where they worked in the building, so that by luck you can track the son of a bitch’s progress down the hall, spot any anomalies. Did he backtrack? Why? It would be good to know whether he targeted individuals, or just shot whoever showed up in his path. Did he track anyone down? If you get someone who wasn’t at her desk, get the story, then pass it on to whichever officer is handling the part of the building where she was during the shooting. Meet here at the end of the day and report anything interesting. Questions?” He looked around. “Then let’s hit the road, folks.”

Nell was getting tired of playing the little woman trailing her man down the halls, but saw no alternative short of making a scene. Why, of all the officers on the Port Dare force, had Fisher assigned her to work with Hugh McLean?

Okay, he was more complex than she’d guessed when she first developed a dislike for him. That didn’t mean she liked him one iota better.

In the car, her riding shotgun again as though it were a given—me man, me belong behind the wheel—he reached for the ignition, then let his hand drop.

“I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “I was a jackass up there.”

Okay, he’d surprised her again. “Yes, you were,” Nell agreed.

He gripped the steering wheel, fingers flexing. “I didn’t sleep well.”

With a woman friend, she would have asked why. With him, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Nell only nodded.

“I guess you hit a raw nerve, suggesting I’ve gotten where I am because of my brothers’ influence.”

Nell bowed her head and stared fixedly at her hands on her lap. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she admitted. “I was just being…bitchy.”

His glance was tinged with humor. “I bring that out in you?”

Among other things. Heat touched her cheeks again. “Apparently.”

He cleared his throat. “I’ll try not to.”

“I’ll do better, too.”

He gave a brief nod, started the car and backed out. She stole a look at his face while he was preoccupied with checking over his shoulder. The earlier tension was missing; his mouth was relaxed, his eyes a more vivid blue than the wintry hue chilled by anger.

How like a man, Nell thought. Situation dealt with, he was satisfied and had moved on. All forgiven and forgotten.

Including, she wondered, the drunken, bawdy interlude in the back seat of his SUV? Had it occurred to him that he hadn’t used a condom? Or did he assume such worries were hers?

Worry did indeed stir like a coiled asp, necessitating a few slow, deep breaths to calm herself. Fate couldn’t be that cruel. She wouldn’t be pregnant. Focus on the job, quit agonizing over nothing.

Thank God on bended knee that Kim never would know how foolish her mother had been. If she ever found out…Nell shuddered. All of those talks about maturity, impulse control, looking to the future, might as well have been given to herself in the shower, to swirl down the drain with the water that had been sluicing her body.

Of course, those very same—no, not lectures, she tried hard not to be autocratic—those very same mother-daughter talks, might be useless anyway. Teenage love, lust and sense of invincibility were powerful opponents to a mother’s word and common sense. What if, right this minute, Kim was letting Colin slip his hand inside that skimpy bikini top, his mouth hot and hungry on hers, his urgently whispered, “Come on, we love each other,” filling her heart with a glorious need to show him how much she loved him?

Nell must have moved, because Hugh asked, “Something wrong?”

She surfaced to see that they were turning into a neighborhood she knew well from patrolling.

“No…yes. I don’t know.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “You were a teenage boy. If you had a girlfriend, did you respect her desire to wait for sex until—oh, not marriage, but until she was older?”

“Respect her for wanting to wait? Maybe.” The car paused at a stop sign, and his eyes met hers. “But I still tried to get down her pants. That’s what teenage boys do.”

She whimpered.

“Your daughter?”

“She’s sixteen. I told you that, didn’t I? She seems to be spending every day with her boyfriend this summer. What can I do?” Nell begged.

“Cuff her and lock the door.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly. “I thought about sending her away to summer camp, but she’s a little old for that.”

“Isn’t she working?”

“Part-time at the library. She’s a page during the school year, too. She didn’t want to quit that to work full-time at some fast-food joint, and I figured, hey, she’s still a kid, let her enjoy one last summer.”

“There was your mistake.” He frowned. “Damn it, I thought Vista Drive was right here.”

She shook her head. “Another couple of blocks. I patrolled this neighborhood for a year.”

“All rentals?” he asked.

“Yup. I got on-the-job training in domestic disturbances. Couple a night, sometimes.”

Not that the neighborhood was a slum. The houses were decent but low-end in price, which meant they were starters for young couples or owned by landlords. Clearly thrown up by one builder, the ranch and split-level houses varied little except by color and orientation—garage doors might be on one side or the other so that bedroom windows didn’t line up. Lawns were already turning brown in a neighborhood where homeowners didn’t bother sprinkling. Most were too busy trying to scratch out a living.

A kid in baggy cargo pants burst from between parked cars on his skateboard. Hugh braked and muttered a curse as the boy gave one push with his foot and rocketed away without any realization of how close he had come to getting hit. Nell saw up the next cul-de-sac that a group of older kids was playing basketball with a backboard on wheels, while younger girls threw pebbles and took turns with a chalk hop-scotch grid drawn on the sidewalk. Now that she was paying attention, there weren’t many adults around, but there were plenty of children: skateboarders in the next cul-de-sac soaring over a jump erected in a driveway, more girls jump-roping, a war with squirt pistols on a front lawn.

Mostly latch-key kids, Nell guessed. Rather like Kim had been for too many years. As she herself had been. Family patterns that played themselves out, generation after generation.

Please not the next one, she prayed.

“Here we go,” Hugh said with satisfaction, pulling to the curb in front of a ranch house with a row of rosebushes blooming beside the driveway.

“I didn’t look at who we’re interviewing,” Nell said. “What floor did we get assigned?”

Hugh showed her the map of the wing of offices on the fourth floor. “Gann’s last stops. We’re to interview everyone working along this hallway, and then the people upstairs where the last victim was, too, if we finish these in time.”

Nell nodded.

On the walk up to the front door, she paused to inhale the heavy fragrance of a huge, fiery red bloom.

The interior of the house was shadowy, but a tinny woman’s voice cried, “How could you? I trusted you!”

Over the ring of the doorbell, the man’s deeper murmur was indistinguishable. Music cued dramatically, followed by the familiar jingle of a television commercial.

A young woman came to the door immediately. She was pretty, no more than twenty-one or -two. A blonde who wore her hair in a ponytail, she wore shorts and a skimpy tank top that outlined high, full breasts.

“Officers. Please, come in.” Her smile wavered. “They said you’d be coming.”

“Thank you.” Narrow-eyed, Nell stole a glance at her partner. He’d damn well better not be checking out their interviewee, who reminded Nell uncomfortably of Kim.

But he only nodded courteously and gestured for Nell to go ahead. Ladies first. She had mixed feelings about his gentlemanly instincts. She was counting on him being chivalrous enough to keep his mouth shut. On the other hand, cops with old-fashioned attitudes generally didn’t like the idea of the little woman under gunfire. Frowning, Nell reminded herself that they’d functioned like a well-practiced team in the Joplin Building.

Watching the young woman turn off the television set, Nell rubbed her temple. A headache, and well deserved. Why in hell was she obsessing about Hugh McLean, she wondered irritably. They were stuck together temporarily. That was all. They could stand each other for a few months. Who cared what made him tick, or what he thought about her?

Stick to your real worries, she advised herself. The unprotected sex she’d had, and a teenage daughter with overactive hormones.

Like her mother’s, apparently.

Nell winced before realizing that Hugh was looking at her.

He raised his eyebrows.

She gave her head a small shake before smiling at the young woman. “You’re Carla Shaw?”

“Yes. I don’t know that I can tell you very much.” She swallowed and then squeezed her hands together. “Um, would you like to sit down?”

“Thank you.”

They chose opposite ends of the couch, facing the TV, while Ms. Shaw sat in an old upholstered rocker.

She rushed into speech, her voice tight with anxiety. “I didn’t actually see very much, you know.”

“That’s fine,” Hugh said, more gently than Nell would have guessed him capable. “We just want to know when you figured out someone was shooting, what you did, whether you saw him at all.”

“I…” She shivered, her face pinched. “I got a phone call from a friend downstairs. Becca is in Accounting. You know, down on the third floor? We’re roommates. Her bedroom is at the end of the hall.” She gestured vaguely. “Only she’s in the hospital. Doctors say she’ll live, but…” A shudder rolled through her body. “Excuse me, I think I’ll get a sweater. I thought it was going to be a hot day, but…” She jumped up and ran from the room.

“Should I follow her?” Nell whispered.

“I think she’ll be back.” Hugh shifted. “It’s already stifling in here.”

Nell nodded. Mid-July, she almost wished the police department had summer-weight uniforms, like the post office did. Except that an officer of the law wouldn’t garner much respect if a pair of shorts showed knobby knees.

Carla came back, looking small inside a baggy sweatshirt. “I’m sorry.”

Hugh’s smile warmed and softened his saturnine face. “Don’t be. You’re still in shock.”

“Maybe.” She bit her lip.

“So, your friend called,” he prompted.

Nell held her pencil poised to take notes.

Carla Shaw’s friend Becca had called and said she heard gunshots and screams and she didn’t know what was happening. She’d let Carla know more when she did. Carla had hurried to the nearest office to tell other people, but she stayed in earshot of her phone. Only Becca didn’t call back. Everybody discussed whether they should phone 911 or what, and finally one of the claims adjusters, a man, of course, had stood.

“Hell, I think I’ll go down there and check it out.”

“I tried to stop him,” Carla said, staring at them with big, haunted eyes. “But he wouldn’t listen. He had to be macho. He went down the stairs. And…um—” her mouth worked “—now he’s dead.”

Nell dropped her notebook and went to the young woman, not so much older than her daughter. Kneeling, she covered her hands with her own. “I’m sorry.”

Tears filled Carla’s eyes. “He was kind of a jerk. But mostly just a guy. You know?”

Nell nodded wordless agreement.

“Why would somebody shoot him?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly.

Carla freed one hand from Nell’s and wiped her wet cheeks. “We couldn’t really hear anything. Only then the elevator doors opened, and everybody stuck their heads out of the offices, because we thought it must be Kyle.” She was shivering uncontrollably now. “Only it wasn’t. It was that man. He was shooting as he walked out. I had just the one glimpse, and then I ran back in my office and locked the door and squeezed behind some filing cabinets. I don’t know how I was strong enough to move them.”

“Did he come into your office?”

“The glass insert in the door exploded, and I think maybe a spray of bullets hit the filing cabinet, because it jerked—really, almost jumped, like somebody had slammed into it. But I couldn’t see out, and later, when the police came, the door was still locked. So I guess he didn’t bother coming in, even though he could have just reached in and opened the door.”

Her eyes showed that she wondered why. Had she hidden so cleverly he thought no one was in there, or did he not want to bother hunting? Had her prayers to God been answered? Or had she just been lucky?

Nell remembered a story she’d heard once about a soldier in Vietnam who’d awakened one morning and discovered that his entire platoon lay dead around him. Every single man had had his throat slit during the night. Every one but him. He spent his life haunted by the question: why? Why him? Why not the friend who had slept beside him, or the guy he didn’t like, or the captain? Why was he chosen to survive? Did his life have some yet unknown purpose? Or had he been chosen at all?

Carla and all the others would live with some of the same questions.

Hugh did the note-taking. They got the names of the others she had clustered with, two of whom had died under the barrage of submachine-gun fire within seconds. Nell comforted as best she could once they had wrung everything Carla knew from her.

In the end, they left her staring at a soap opera on television, still huddled inside her sweatshirt as though the temperature was sixty instead of eighty inside the small house. Walking silently down the driveway under the hot sun beside a tall, grim Hugh, Nell smelled again the heavy scent of the roses.

They would hear this story again, and again, Nell realized. Today, tomorrow, perhaps for weeks. She knew from experience that by the end of the day, they might be able to hear it and minutes later climb into the car and crack a joke, or talk about dinner plans, or a movie one of them had seen last weekend. They might even think themselves inured, but the horror would be lurking deep in their psyches, the reminder of the sprawled bodies, the acrid scent of blood, the remembered terror on every face.

How would she get through this summer, working this horrific case, worrying about her daughter, worrying about herself? she wondered in a kind of daze. Partnered with a macho jerk who could smile like that?

A man who, insane though the very idea was, would be the father of the unborn child she might be carrying, if the fates chose to teach her a lesson.