Читать книгу Their Baby Girl...?: The Baby Mission / Her Baby Secret - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 14

Chapter 7

“How about Hannah? Are you a Hannah?”

C.J. looked down at her daughter, trying out yet another name on her. The christening had been postponed because Father Gannon had suddenly been called away on personal business. His aged mother in Ireland was ill and not expected to recover. She could, of course, go with another priest, but she had her heart set on Father Gannon. She could wait. And while she waited, she continued searching for that elusive middle name.

Wide blue eyes looked back at her. Picking the baby up, C.J. patted the small, dry bottom.

“No, huh? How about Annie? Annie do anything for you?” She held the baby away from her, peering at the almost perfect face, trying to envision her daughter responding to the name. “Nothing.” C.J. tucked her against her left hip. “Okay, Desiree, how about that one? No, you’re right, it’s all wrong. Napoleon’s mistress after Josephine, what are we trying to say here, right?” She sighed. “Let’s forget about this name game for now and get you some breakfast, Joy.”

C.J. hummed softly to herself as she walked back into the kitchen, the baby nestled against her hip. Outside, the world was dressed in dreary shades of gray, a rainstorm threatening to become a reality at any moment. But it was Saturday and she wasn’t going into work today. She intended to make the most of it and spend the day bonding with her daughter.

It amazed her how quickly this little person had become such an integral part of her life. She couldn’t begin to imagine life without her now.

The baby seemed to be growing a little each day right in front of her eyes. Each stage filled C.J. with wonder, but made her feel nostalgic, as well, something she would never have thought she’d experience. Nostalgic for the precious, small person she’d held against her breast, even though it had only been two short months since she was born.

Looking at her daughter, C.J. laughed softly to herself. “I don’t know, Baby, I’ve turned into a real marshmallow when it comes to you.” She opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of milk, then placed it on the counter. Maybe she’d just name her Babe and be done with it. Naw. “If I feel this way now, what am I going to do when you want to start dating? Hanging out to the wee hours of the morning with who knows what kind of characters. And all they’ll want is—”

C.J. stopped abruptly. Something akin to a revelation came to her. What she was feeling had been felt by mothers since the beginning of time. What her own mother must have gone through with her. She’d been more than a handful, determined to stay out as late as her brothers had, eschewing curfews.

Wow. Her poor mother. “Omigod, honey, I think I owe your grandmother a great big apology.”

With the baby still tucked against her hip, C.J. picked up the telephone and dialed her parents’ phone number with the same hand. She’d discovered she had an aptitude for doing a great many things with just one hand if she needed to, the other being recruited for far more precious work. Necessity was truly the mother of invention.

She heard her mother’s voice on the other end of the line. “Hello?”

“I’m sorry.”

There was a slight pause on the other end. “Chris, is that you?” Concern filled her mother’s voice. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

“Yes, it’s me.” She hadn’t meant to scare her mother. “Nothing’s wrong, Mom. I just wanted to call you to say I’m sorry.”

A note of confusion entered Diane’s voice, even as the concern lingered.

“Why, what did you do? Chris, are you sure you’re all right?” Her voice began to escalate as countless scenarios occurred to her. “You’re not in any hostage situation are you? God, I wanted you to go into your father’s firm instead of this cloak-and-dagger business. Why wouldn’t you listen to me for just once in your life? You were always too independent—”

C.J. found her opening as her mother took a breath. “Mom, slow down. I’m not in any hostage situation. I’m standing right here in my kitchen with the baby on my hip and—”

“She’s not a rag doll, C.J.” her mother admonished. “Use both hands.”

C.J. rolled her eyes. “Mom, can I just get this out, please?” She said the words in a rush before the next interruption could occur. “I’m sorry for everything I put you through while I was growing up.”

“You’re forgiven.” Her mother’s concern took another direction. “You’re not ill or anything, are you, Chris? Should I come over?” Not waiting for a response, she obviously made up her mind. “Give me a minute, I’ll just turn off your father’s breakfast and—”

“Mom,” C.J. raised her voice. “Mom, stop letting your imagination run away with you. I’m fine, the baby’s fine, I just suddenly had momlike feelings, and I realized what you must have gone through all these years with all of us. With me,” she added after a beat. “And I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for the grief I gave you.”

“Well.” She heard her mother sighing a sigh she’d obviously kept in for years. “I’m glad I lived to see the day.” There was no pause whatsoever as she asked, “Now, does she have a middle name yet?”

Time to retreat, C.J. thought. “I’ve got to go, Mom, there’s a call coming in on the other line. Talk to you later, bye.”

She heard her mother sigh, murmur goodbye and then hang up.

“Okay, young lady, we were about to get you some breakfast before I had that unprecedented qualm of conscience.” She cocked her head, looking at her daughter again. “Are you a Joy Michelle? No, that’s not right, either.”

With a sigh she opened the microwave door and reached for the bottle. The phone rang. Now what?

“This’ll just take a minute,” she promised her daughter. Picking up the receiver, she wedged it against her head and shoulder as she returned to the microwave. “Hello?”

Warrick was on the other end. His voice was grim. “There’s been another murder, C.J.”

She didn’t have to ask if this concerned their killer. Her stomach instantly tightened.

Letting out a breath, she punched in one minute, three seconds and pushed the start button. “Where?”

“In Santa Barbara.”

She frowned. That didn’t sound right. “Santa Barbara? Is our boy spreading out?” God, she hoped not. C.J. shivered.

“That’s what I’m going up there to find out.”

Where was this coming from? “Not without me you’re not.”

“This is just a courtesy call, C.J. I figured you’d want to know. Stay home and take care of your baby.”

C.J. frowned. This was getting old. Ever since she’d returned to work, Warrick had been treating her differently. Not as an equal, but like someone who needed protecting. She didn’t know if it was because of the kiss that shimmered between them like a silent entity, or because of the baby, but either way, she didn’t like it and she wasn’t about to stand for it.

“Warrick, this is my case just as much as it is yours. Now just give me a few minutes to get some things together so I can take the baby over to my mother’s. I can be there in—” she realized she didn’t have enough information to make a time estimate “—where are you?”

“I’m still at the field office. But C.J., there’s no need—”

The microwave bell went off. She opened the door, then drew out the arm that was supporting her baby just far enough to test the temperature of the milk on her wrist. Perfect. Unlike this conversation.

“Yes, there is a need,” she insisted. “I have a need.” Moving the chair away from the table with her foot, she sat down, then shifted the baby onto her lap. Cradling her daughter to her, she began feeding the infant, all the while never losing an ounce of her indignation. “Damn it, Warrick, I’m still the same partner you always had.”

“No, you’re not.” His voice was low, steely. Unmovable. “You’re someone’s mother now.”

That didn’t warrant the preferential treatment. “And as someone’s mother, I want to catch this bastard before he robs some other mother of her child.” She smiled at her daughter, keeping her own voice calm so as not to frighten the baby. But it wasn’t easy when her temper was flaring this way. “Now stop treating me as if I was made of porcelain and give me the courtesy of waiting for me to get there.”

Soft tone or not, he knew C.J. well enough to know she was mad as the proverbial wet hen. “I’m not sure I want to do that now. You sound like you’re breathing fire.”

“You bet I’m breathing fire,” she said between clenched teeth, her smile never wavering. “I worked long and hard to get here and I’m not about to give it up because you suddenly feel the need to treat me with kid gloves. I wouldn’t treat you any differently if you had a baby.”

She heard him laugh. Even though she was angry, the sound rippled against her ear, undulating through her. Did postpartum syndrome include hallucinations?

“If I had a baby, the world would treat me differently.”

The baby was chugging away at the bottle, draining it like a trouper. At this rate, C.J. estimated, she would double her size in no time.

“Very funny. Now let me get off the phone and do what I have to do. And you’d better be waiting for me when I get there or I swear I will fillet your skin off your body when I get my hands on you.”

She heard him laugh again. “Love it when you talk dirty like that. Okay, I’ll wait. Just don’t take too long.”

C.J. hung up. The bottle was empty. She put the baby over her shoulder and just before she began burping her, she hit the speed dial to call her mother and switched to speakerphone. Multitasking had become a way of life for her.

She heard the phone being picked up. “Mom? Guess what—”

Thirty-five minutes later, C.J. was dashing off the federal building elevator and into the task force room.

Warrick was the only one in there. He looked up as she entered. “You look winded.”

She was winded. There had been no need to pack up anything, her mother had spares of all the necessary items for the baby. She’d made the trip from her house to her mother’s in record time. For once, every light was with her. The hardest part was leaving the baby. You’d think it would get easier with each day, she thought, but it didn’t. Some days it just got harder.

Still, C.J. waved away his observation. She was eager for news. “Never mind my wind, what have we got?”

He handed her a picture that had come in over the fax less than an hour ago. “Sally Albrecht, twenty-three, blond, blue-eyed, strangled, poetically arranged, pink nail polish.”

She nodded grimly, taking the photograph from him. This wasn’t the kind of thing any of them welcomed hearing. She studied it for a moment. Like all the others, the latest victim appeared as if she were sleeping.

“Sounds like our boy’s gotten tired of the local area and is making his way up the coast.” Putting the fax down on her desk, she crossed to the map that had a tight little circle of pins on it. She’d been hoping that they could keep narrowing the circle, not widen it. Usually, serial killer victims were all over the map. This was supposed to make it easier for them. It didn’t.

When she turned back from the map, she was frowning. “I don’t like it. This blows the whole theory to pieces that he’s a local guy.”

“I know.” He’d signed out a Bureau vehicle in the last half hour. Ready to go, Warrick gave her one last chance to change her mind. “You sure you don’t want to stay home?”

He was just trying to be kind, she told herself. She had to remember that and stop taking offense where none was intended. There was no doubt in her mind that if he had some personal reason impeding him, she’d be trying to get him to stay behind.

C.J. nodded. “I’m sure. After my mother finished complaining that the Bureau doesn’t let me have a life, she was thrilled to have to watch the baby.”

“I’ve got a company car waiting downstairs. Let’s go.”

Walking through the office door first, Warrick didn’t bother holding it open. C.J. put her hand out in time to keep it from shutting on her. “Hey!”

Warrick looked at her innocently. “You said not to treat you any differently from any of the other guys, remember?”

She strode past him to the elevator and punched the down button. “I don’t recall you slamming the door in any of their faces.”

“No slamming,” he pointed out. “Just every man for himself.”

“Person,” she corrected as the elevator arrived and opened its doors. C.J. walked in ahead of him. “Every person for themselves.”

Warrick followed her in and sighed. He pressed for the first floor. “I got a feeling this is going to be a long road trip.”

Santa Barbara was approximately 150 miles north of the county that had previously been the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s stomping grounds. Ordinarily C.J. loved driving up the coast, but the unexpected rain with its gloom made the trip dreary.

They’d flipped a coin, and Warrick had lost the toss. Taking the keys, he’d gotten behind the wheel of the midsize vehicle the Bureau had provided.

C.J. settled back in her seat and stared straight ahead. The rain was almost mesmerizingly hypnotic, causing everything farther than twenty feet away to appear surreal.

“You know, it’s funny, but I miss her.” She glanced at Warrick to see if he was laughing. He wasn’t. “When I’m on the job, I find myself missing her, and when I’m home, my mind keeps going back to the case.”

That was the complaint of more than one special agent. He could feel the car beginning to climb. Warrick swallowed to relieve the pressure in his ears. “Welcome to the world of parenthood.”

She laughed shortly, shifting in her seat. Rain made her restless. Or maybe it was this case. “How would you know?”

He shrugged. “I read a lot.” Moving with the curve in the road, Warrick spared her a glance. “You know, Rodriguez could just as easily have come with me.”

C.J. thought the man was a good agent, but he liked his weekends to himself. “Rodriguez is still in love. Leave him with his fiancée.”

Driving was getting a little trickier. Warrick slowed their speed down to a careful thirty-five miles an hour. “Well, Culpepper isn’t in love.” Not the way the man liked to complain about his wife, although Warrick suspected that there was a measure of affection in the grousing. “I know he would have been more than happy to make the trip to Santa Barbara.”

C.J. looked at him incredulously. “You telling me that you’d rather have Culpepper sitting here next to you than me?”

For an optimistic woman, she had a habit of twisting his words to give them a darker meaning. “No, I’m telling you that it would have been okay for you to sit this one out.”

C.J. wished he’d stop trying to make things easy on her. How could she feel like his equal if he kept insisting on spreading out his cloak for her so she could walk over the puddles without getting her shoes dirty?

“No,” she told him quietly, firmly, “it wouldn’t have.”

“C.J. you’re a new mother—”

Not that again. “Not so new,” she contradicted. “Sure, I’m a mother now, but I’m also a special agent with the FBI.” And that was very important to her. She’d had to buck not just her mother, but her father as well to get to where she was. And that didn’t begin to take in the male agents along the way who resented having a woman on equal footing with them. In many ways it was still a man’s world. “It’s who I am and I’m damn proud of it. I’ve just got to find the proper balance to this combination, that’s all. And you throwing up roadblocks all the time isn’t exactly helping.”

What was the use? thought Warrick. Mules had nothing on C.J. He slowed down more as a car, traveling in the opposite direction, its tires plowing through large puddles, sent an even heavier shower of water their way. For a second the windshield was obscured. Rain brought out the nutcases, he thought, all driving as if they had something to prove.

“I’m not throwing up roadblocks,” he told her. “And I thought I was helping.”

“Think again.”

They needed a break. His eyes on the road, Warrick switched on the radio. He wanted some music to take the place of their voices.

She frowned at his selection and changed the station.

He switched it back, then batted away her hand when she reached for the dial again. “I’m driving, I get to pick the music.”

“I’m driving on the way back.”

He didn’t bother looking her way. “Deal.”

Crossing her arms in front of her, C.J. settled back in her seat again and watched the rain fight an endless skirmish with the windshield wipers.

She could never get used to it, C.J. thought. The smell of the bleak, dismal area where the Medical Examiner did his gruesome work permeated her senses even as she tried to breathe through her mouth.

The victim’s body had been taken to the morgue. The local coroner had held off on the mandatory autopsy until the FBI special agents could get there. The moment they’d gone to the sheriff’s office, the man had brought them here.

C.J. tried to divorce herself from the fact that the body on the table had been a person with aspirations and dreams under a day ago. Someone’s daughter, someone’s sister. She succeeded only marginally. Glancing at Warrick’s profile, she saw that it remained stoic. Didn’t he have any feelings?

Steeling herself, she approached the table.

“When was the time of death?” Warrick asked the heavyset man in the white lab coat.

The M.E., a Dr. Hal Edwards, glanced at the notes on his clipboard before answering.

“As near as I can place it, about fifteen hours ago.” He flipped the pages back in place, retiring the clipboard to a desk. “I hate to tell you this,” he looked from one to the other, “but you’ve probably figured it out already. Most of the clues have been washed away. It’s been raining steadily here for the past few hours.”

“Who found the body?” C.J. asked. She resisted the desire to brush back the victim’s hair. There were no signs that the woman had suffered. She supposed that was some consolation to the victim’s family, although not much.

“A jogger running for cover stumbled over her in the park. Called the police.”

“Man?” Warrick wanted to know. It was not unheard of to have a killer take a life then pretend to be the first one on the scene to try to avoid suspicion.

“Woman. They had to give her a sedative to calm her down.”

C.J. couldn’t take her eyes off the girl’s face. “God, she looks like a kid.”

“We’ve got a positive I. D.” the M.E. told her. “She was older than she looked.” This time he didn’t refer to his notes. The facts were still fresh. “Waitress in a local restaurant. No priors, decent girl. Engaged to be married. She looked like she fit the description of the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s victims, so we called you.” He recited the similarities. “Bruising around the neck, died of asphyxiation, pink nail polish.”

C.J. carefully circled the girl, moving away from the M.E. The marks around the girl’s neck were dark, ugly. She could almost feel the killer’s hands around her own throat, literally choking the life out of her. C.J. shivered, looking down at the girl’s hand. Something nagged at her. She picked it up to examine it.

The polish looked darker than the others had been. She looked closer.

Putting the lifeless hand down again, C.J. raised her eyes to the other two occupants in the room. Both men were looking at her. “This isn’t his work.”

The M.E took exception. He gestured toward the body. “The MO matches.”