Читать книгу Judging Joshua - Mary Wilson Anne - Страница 11

Joshua was startled by Riley’s actions, and his hand froze, her hand over his, holding on to it so tightly it was almost painful. Their eyes met, and he saw her shock at her own actions in the deep blue. Slowly, she let go of him, sinking back and down into the chair.

He let go of the phone and said, “The car’s been stolen. Detective Gagne will contact the owner for verification.”

“When?”

“As soon as he can and he’ll call back when he does.”

“Meanwhile?”

“I’m to hold you here.”

What little color she had left drained from her face and for a moment he thought she was going to faint again. But she took a shaky breath, then said, “Okay, I understand how this looks. I really do. But you’re making a huge mistake.”

He tented his fingers to look at her over them. A novice criminal? A first-time job? A truly bad car thief? An innocent woman? He wished he knew. “Is there anyone who can back up your story? Your employer? Family? Friends? Someone who knew all about this?”

She stared at him, then finally shook her head. “No. My employer is still my future employer and I’ll lose the job before I even get it if a cop calls about me stealing a car. I don’t have any family, and I didn’t really tell anyone about this car-delivery thing.”

“Alvin Nyland isn’t available,” he said, trying to figure out how a person like Riley Shaw ended up totally alone in this world.

“If he is my Alvin Nyland,” she murmured.

“What does that mean?”

She shrugged. “I’ve been thinking. What if he’s a fraud? He didn’t give me any papers. He checked on me, and I didn’t check on him. We met in the evening at his office, and no one else was there. He gave me the paper and directions.” Her color seemed almost normal now, but he didn’t like the way she hugged her arms around her middle and hunched forward. When she spoke again, she was almost speaking to herself. “What if it’s all a lie, a setup? What if I got roped into being part of some car-theft ring? What if they get people like me to drive stolen cars to a destination, and if they get there, fine, and if not, the criminals would never be involved?” She looked up at him. “That happens, doesn’t it?”

Joshua couldn’t figure out why he had the impulse to make things better for her, or why, when he heard her take a shuddering breath, he hated what he was doing. “It could,” he conceded as he pushed the phone toward her. “You still have your one call.”

She stared at the phone as if she didn’t know what to do with it, then suddenly reached for it. “Where’s that paper I gave you with Mindy Sullivan’s phone number on it?” she asked.

He retrieved it from his jacket and handed it to her.

Watching as Riley made the call, Joshua noticed her face tug into a frown as she hit the disconnect button. Very carefully, she redialed the number and listened. She put the receiver back in the cradle so hard that plastic cracked against plastic and she hugged her arms around her middle again.

“No answer?” he asked.

She shook her head. “The…the number isn’t working,” she whispered.

Before he could respond, Riley stood and faced him. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she mumbled, then put a hand over her mouth.

“Are you serious?”

She nodded without saying anything and Joshua wasn’t taking any chances this time. He had her by the arm, leading her out of the office and to the women’s restroom. Riley pulled free of him and hurried ahead, but instead of going into a stall, she went to the nearest sink and grabbed the sides of the white enamel, her head forward, swallowing hard.

“If you’re going to be sick, use—”

“I’m okay,” she whispered. She splashed cold water on her face, dampening the loose tendrils of hair that had escaped her ponytail and dripping down on to her shirt, darkening the cotton. She took several deep breaths, then reached for paper towels from the dispenser on the wall and pressed them to her face.

If it hadn’t been bad enough to have had a woman faint dead away in his arms, now the same woman was close to being sick. He could see each breath she took, the way she shuddered on a final sigh as she pulled the towels down and crushed them into a ball in her hand.

“Are you okay?” he asked, feeling ridiculous standing there.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled as she dropped the towels in the wastebasket, then held her hands under the cold water, just letting it wash over her skin.

He saw her reflection in the distorted mirror over the sink. Bright color dotted both cheeks and dark smudges shadowed her eyes. She finally turned off the water, dried her hands on more towels, tossed those towels away and turned to him. He didn’t miss how she still held to the sink with her right hand.

“Do you need me to call Gordie?” he asked.

“No, he can’t help me.” She turned back to her reflection in the mirror and brushed at her hair. He didn’t miss the unsteadiness in her hand. Damn it, he didn’t want to feel protective, but he did. She met his gaze in the mottled mirror. “Do you usually escort female prisoners into the bathroom?”

That errant feeling of protectiveness fled, replaced by annoyance. “The only reason I brought you in here was that the cells were farther away and I thought—” He cut off his own words, impatient with himself for feeling the need to explain his actions to her. “Next time, I’ll take you to your cell. There’s a toilet and sink there.”

The color in her cheeks deepened. “Oh, joy. All the comforts of home,” she muttered.

It was a good thing he was only doing this job as a fill-in for his dad. He’d been a cop most of his adult life, but didn’t want to be doing it now, and especially not with her. “You know, it might be better if you just told me what’s going on, and maybe we can work something out.”

“Are you offering me a deal?” she asked, continuing to grip the edge of the sink. She turned to him.

“The acting sheriff would have to do that. But, if you tell me the truth, maybe I can talk to the higher-ups and work something out for you.”

“I bare my soul and you give me a break?” She regarded him without blinking. “Your acting sheriff will cut me a deal?”

“If you tell me everything, we can go from there.”

She exhaled harshly, with obvious exasperation. “I’ve told you everything, so where do we go from here?”

He shrugged. “I hold you until Chicago gets back to me on what they want done.”

“When will they get back to you?”

“No idea.”

“Meanwhile, you just hold me here? What about booking me and my arraignment? Isn’t it a fact you have seventy-two hours to arraign me after booking? There isn’t an open-ended time limit, is there?”

Damn it, she wasn’t a novice at this. She knew her stuff.

“If I book you now, yeah, it’s seventy-two hours.”

“What do you mean, if you book me now?”

“I can book you, get it going, then it’s on the record. And we’ll have to arraign you on the evidence we have now.”

“Do I hear an ‘or’ in that statement?”

He wasn’t at all sure he could make this work, but he threw out a tentative deal that he knew would be a hard sell to Charlie. His dad would have gone for it, hands down, but Charlie was tougher, a more letter-of-the-law type cop. But he was also reasonable. “If I can talk the acting sheriff into it, maybe we can hold off on the booking, just detain you for a day or so, and if it comes up that you’re telling the truth, then this never happened. If we book you, and in two days we find out you’re telling the truth, then we’ve got a bit of a mess on our hands. It’ll show you were picked up and booked and—”

“A day or two?” she asked.

“Chicago should have something by tomorrow, the next day at the latest. Then we can do what’s necessary.”

She was silent for a long moment, staring at the floor, then she met his gaze. “None of this will go on my record if what I’ve told you is the truth?”

He dug himself further into the offer. “None of it.”

“And the acting sheriff will agree?”

He shrugged. “I’ll talk to him, lay it out for him, but it will have to be his decision.”

“But you think he’ll agree?”

“There’s a good chance he will.”

She stood straighter. “Okay, I’ll wait. I’ll let you detain me until Chicago straightens this out.”

Joshua didn’t know if he was relieved or being a real fool. He just hoped Charlie would go for the delayed booking. “Okay, let’s get you settled.”

“Can I wait in your office until you find out if he’ll wait on the booking?” she asked.

“First of all, it’s not my office, I’m just using it for now, and second, I don’t know when I can run it past Charlie, and since you’re being detained, that means you’re being held, and that means, you’re being held in a cell.”

He saw that urge in her to argue, to fight him, but she finally said, “Let’s get this over with,” and went around him to the door. Once again he was the one following as she walked out into the squad room. From behind, he noticed her slender hips in the faded denim, the movement of her body as she walked determinedly toward the lockdown security door as if going there had been her decision all along.

He heard someone talking near the front entrance, but didn’t take his eyes off Riley. They went into the cell area and she stopped abruptly. Quick sidestepping kept him from running into her back. “Which cell?” she asked.

He motioned to the one he’d carried her into earlier. The door was still open. “That one’s fine.” He could see her hesitate, then take a deep breath, as if preparing to plunge into deep water, then she went inside. She turned just inside the door and he didn’t go in after her.

He looked at her, framed by the metal frame and the bars on either side. He’d seen enough prisoners walk into a cell, and he thought he was immune to any response beyond the required caution with any alleged criminal. But as he looked at Riley Shaw, he realized the picture didn’t add up. Something was amiss, but he wasn’t about to stand here and figure it out. He’d let Charlie deal with her. “How about some food?”

She looked from side to side, then went to the cot on the back wall, sat on the edge and looked out at him. “What kind of meal do you have for the condemned?”

Her sarcasm wasn’t disguised, but he chose not to respond in kind. Instead he reached for the cell door, slid it shut with a clang of metal against metal and saw her flinch. “How about sandwich and soup?”

She pressed her hands to her knees and shrugged. “Whatever.”

She’d get whatever he could manage. He turned to lock the door at the security panel on the opposite wall, but stopped when she spoke again. “Can you leave the door open?”

He looked back at her. “The cells have to be locked so—”

“No, that door,” she said, pointing to the lockdown area’s metal security door. “Can you just leave that one open for now? Just in case I faint again or something?”

He seemed to be making up the rules as he went along, so he just nodded, hit the lock button and the cell door clicked. Back in his dad’s office, Joshua sat at the desk and realized, for the first time, the desk was positioned to view the security door. Riley was pacing in the cell, back and forth, going out of sight, coming back into sight, then going out of sight again.

He grabbed the phone receiver, put in a call to Rusty’s Diner and swivelled his chair so it faced the window that overlooked the security yard. Following Gordie’s instructions, he ordered a turkey sandwich and soup from the small diner a couple of blocks north of the station, and was told the order would be delivered as soon as they found someone to bring it over to him.

Once he’d hung up, Joshua let his eyes skim over the office. It almost felt like home, with a comfortable sameness to it that had settled over the years. He’d thought filling in for his dad would be a snap. Just do what Charlie needed, give him a break now and then. But in an odd way this place had been his lifeline once he came back.

Now it felt uncomfortable, as if something was hanging over his head, a certain discomfort that he couldn’t label. Maybe an uneasiness. He didn’t know why. His little girl J.J. was fine, back at the ranch with his dad and his stepmother. Joshua didn’t have to be anywhere he didn’t want to be. He could walk out of here right now and that would be that. But on a gut level, he wasn’t sure why he’d agreed to do this. He was here for the duration, in a ski town whose bitter cold was a far cry from Atlanta, facing the coming holidays with no anticipation beyond getting through them and to the other side, into a new year.

He sat forward, looked down at the papers on the desk and read the top one about a stolen BMW out of Chicago. Handwritten in the margin was “Riley Shaw,” along with a notation with the detective’s name in Chicago and some other notes. He glanced up and was relieved she wasn’t at the cell door any longer.

The radio signaled an incoming call and he hit Receive on the box on his desk. It was Charlie calling in. The incident at the lifts was under control and he was taking Wes with him on rounds, then he’d be back. Joshua would be here for another two hours at least.

He stared at the papers on his desk. Just talking to the detective from Chicago had let him know the case wasn’t a priority in any sense of the word. If it took a day or two or even three, they wouldn’t sweat it. But if Charlie agreed to hold off on booking, he wouldn’t do it more than a day. Two, tops. Joshua had an idea and reached for the phone. He put in a call to Harvey Sills, a cop who’d worked vice in a Chicago suburb for ten years and someone he’d dealt with on a case four years ago.

News was Harvey had taken early retirement after being wounded, but had stayed in the business as a private investigator. He didn’t have any trouble getting a number and putting in a call to Harvey. It rang four times, then went to voice mail.

“Harvey. Joshua Pierce, here,” he said after the beep. “I know it’s been a while, but I’m back in Silver Creek, filling in for my dad for a while. I’m working a case out of the Chicago area and I need some help. I was thinking you might be able to expedite it for me. If you could call me when you get a chance, I’d appreciate it.” He left his cell number and the office number, then hung up.

Harvey had contacts and he was right there in the city. If anyone could get answers, he could. The buzzer sounded when the entry door to the station opened, and Joshua got up at the same time someone called from the squad room. “Hey, where is everyone?”

Spotting Annie Logan just rounding the reception desk, Joshua got up and headed out. Annie was the owner of the Silver Creek Hotel, and apparently the delivery service for Rusty’s Diner at the moment. She was holding an orange take-out bag in one hand and pushing off her fur-lined hood with the other. She smiled when she saw him. “There you are.” She beamed.

He crossed to meet her halfway and realized Annie hadn’t changed since they were kids. She’d been plain then, and still was, but somewhere along the way she’d developed a certain attractiveness. She’d always smiled, been happy and full of life. Married and happy, she worked at the hotel she owned with her husband, Rick.

She was grinning at him, her face flushed from the cold. “Boy it seems like old times seeing you in this place.” She handed him the bag. “Too bad your dad’s not here, too. How’s he doing?”

“He’s staying out of trouble, getting better,” he said.

“Who’ve you got in there?” she asked, looking around him at the open security door. “I heard you were babysitting a prisoner. Who is it, that Jenner kid? Or some drunk who thought they could ski down Main Street and use the cars as slalom markers?”

“Just a common car thief,” he said, realizing how wrong that was as soon as he said it. There was nothing “common” about Riley Shaw.

“Oh, big-time law stuff, huh?” She grinned.

“Yeah,” he said. “How much do I owe you?”

“Rusty said he’d put it on the tab. You know, if this is the way you do things, you should forget about going back to Atlanta and run for sheriff here when your dad’s term is up. Making big arrests and all. You could give Charlie a run for his money.”

That wasn’t even in his thought process. He knew he’d go back to Atlanta, but he wasn’t sure what he’d do there. He wasn’t at all sure he’d go back to law enforcement. He had options and he was still weighing them. “Who in their right mind would go up against Charlie? I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Annie patted his arm and said with mock seriousness, “Humility is a good thing, Joshua. A very good thing.”

RILEY COULD HEAR Joshua talking to a woman who sounded so happy and cheerful that it was almost painful to listen to. “Did you hear it’s going to snow tonight?” the woman asked. “Who would have thought we were all wailing about having no snow not too long ago?” She laughed for some reason, then asked, “How’s J.J. doing?”

J.J.? His wife? Riley had seen a wedding ring on his finger.

“She’s doing great,” he said.

“You give her a big hug for me, you hear?”

“Absolutely.”

Her voice was getting farther away as she spoke. “Say hi to your folks?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

“Good to have you back, Josh. See you soon.” A door opened, then closed and there was silence.

Riley pulled the blankets off the cot, threw them into the left front corner of the cell onto the floor, then crossed over and sank onto them. She could see out the security door from here and right into the office she’d been in earlier. If she stayed on the cot, all she could see was empty desks. She sat back, resting against the bars, and looked around the cell. Dull walls, cement flooring, the spindly cot with its thin mattress, the stark toilet and a sink stuck in the wall. Someone had brought in a corrugated screen that was about four feet high and three feet wide, made of what looked like cardboard. It was supposed to be for some privacy in the toilet area, but all it did was add more ugliness to the space. Even the single window looked stark.

She closed her eyes to shut out her surroundings and pulled up her knees to press her forehead against them. Joshua and that Annie person sounded like friends; old, comfortable friends. They teased a bit, talked about family. And for a moment, she ached with the sense that she didn’t have that. She never had. Friends. Family. She closed her eyes so tightly colors exploded behind them. She didn’t know much about those things.

“What in the hell?”

Her head jerked up at the sound of Joshua’s sharp exclamation and she twisted around to see him inside the lockdown area on the other side of the bars to her cell, staring at her. “What’s wrong?” she asked, scrambling to her feet.

He was holding a bright orange bag in one hand, his face set in a dark frown. “I didn’t see you there,” he said.

She sank back on the blankets and watched him as he crossed to the security panel. He punched in the code and the cell door clicked. He turned, reaching for the cell door and sliding it back. “Oh, I get it. You thought I’d made a break for it, didn’t you?”

He didn’t look at her as he crossed to the small table by the cot. “I don’t know what I thought,” he said as he reached into the bag and took out a foam carton and a small covered cup.

“Whatever,” she murmured as he turned and crossed to where she was sitting.

“Why are you sitting on the floor?” he asked. “Were you dizzy again or sick or something?”

She had to crane her neck a bit to look up at him. “Just thinking,” she said.

“The bed’s not too uncomfortable, and I can bring in a chair if you need a place to sit, a place to think.”

She shrugged, then brushed at the denim on her legs. “Thanks, but I’m good.”

He shook his head, as if he questioned her sanity. “Well, there’s hot soup and a sandwich over there when you want it.”

She was silent.

He frowned at her. “You know, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. And personally, I prefer the easy way.”

“Easy for you,” she said, and got quickly to her feet.

Her movement caught him off guard and she accidentally bumped into his shoulder, rocking her backward. He caught her just before she would have struck the bars, and held her with both hands, gripping her shoulders. For a moment they were inches from each other and she could see a flare of gold in his hazel eyes. “Steady?” he asked.

She hadn’t felt steady since she’d first heard the siren and seen the flashing lights. “Sure,” she lied. “I’m steady.”

He hesitated, then let her go, but didn’t move back to give her any space. “Let’s make this as easy on both of us as we can, okay?”

“Okay, okay,” she said on a sigh. “Coffee sounds lovely if it’s convenient for you and you don’t have to go out of your way to get it.”

“I’ll get it,” he said, and for a moment she thought he was going to smile. There was something in his eyes, maybe a shadow of humor at his lips. She wasn’t sure. “Coffee it is.” He crossed to the cell door, then turned back to her. “Cream and sugar?”

“No, thank you very much.”

This time he did smile, a quick, quirky expression that took years off his features before it was gone. And he was gone, leaving the cell door standing open. She thought of her crack about making a break for it, and if she’d had any place to go, she might have considered it. But she didn’t have anywhere to go.

So she checked on the food—a turkey sandwich on some wheat bread and a small cup with a lid. She opened the cup, found some sort of fragrant vegetable soup, then took it back with her to the corner of the cell and dropped down onto the floor. She sat cross-legged and hardly noticed when Joshua returned.

She didn’t look up, but stared at the soup and listened to him cross to the cot. When he came over to her, she glanced at his boots, at the scuffs and obvious wear. They certainly weren’t your regulation-issue cop shoes, that was for sure. He cleared his throat and said, “Coffee’s on the table.”

She expected him to leave, but he didn’t. Instead he crouched in front of her. “The easy way is for you to tell me exactly what’s going on.”

She sighed heavily. “I told you what happened. That’s it.”

He was silent for a long, nerve-racking moment, then said, “I know what you said, now how about the truth?”