Читать книгу Bachelor Sheriff - Пола Грейвс - Страница 11

“She’s squeaky clean.” Aaron’s brother-in-law and fellow deputy Riley Patterson handed Aaron a file folder. “Her insurance agent says she barely has enough coverage on the house to pay for the repairs. She’s never shown any signs of being an attention seeker. Damned if I can see where she had a motive to burn down her own house.”

Aaron had figured as much. It was more likely that someone else had lit the match to torch the place. But who? And why? The same factors that made Melissa Draper an unlikely suspect for arson made her an unlikely victim as well.

Still, she clearly knew more about the fire than she was admitting. It was time he asked her, point blank, to tell him what she was hiding.

He grabbed the phone and dialed the number to the cottage. After five rings, the answering machine picked up. Stifling a mild curse, he left a message, wishing he’d thought to get her cell phone number before he’d left that morning. “Is her cell number in this file somewhere?” he asked Riley.

“Check her initial statement.”

Aaron found the number and tried it. No answer on the cell phone, either. He left a message there as well, grumbling as he hung up.

“Maybe she walked down to the bait shop,” Riley suggested.

Aaron tried the number to his parents’ shop. His sister Hannah answered on the second ring. “Cooper Cove Marina.”

“Hey, Skipper, is Melissa Draper there?” He knew he wouldn’t have to explain his query. His mother would have told Hannah all about her houseguest the second his sister walked into the bait shop.

“She left the cottage about twenty minutes ago,” Hannah told him. “I think she got a call from a client or something.”

A client? She was trying to work today?

“She seemed troubled when she left.” Hannah’s voice went serious. “She tried to hide it, but the call changed her whole mood.”

Worry nudged Aaron in the gut. What if the call was connected to the secret she was keeping about the arson? “If she calls or shows back up, call me immediately,” Aaron told her. “Tell Mom and Dad to do the same.”

“Is she in some kind of trouble?” Hannah asked.

“Probably not.” Even he could hear the lack of conviction in his voice.

After he rang off, he called the county dispatcher and requested that they flag any calls from Melissa Draper’s cell and home phone numbers and let Aaron know about them.

“Hey, Aaron, check this out,” Riley called from his desk.

Aaron crossed to his brother-in-law’s side and looked over his shoulder at the computer screen. On the screen was a police report from the department’s archives, a domestic disturbance call from a couple of years earlier.

The complainant was Melissa Draper, who lived at an address on Tuckahaw Road.

“This is the third similar report I’ve found,” Riley said. “Three domestic disturbances, three calls from Melissa Draper.”

Three different couples involved, Aaron saw as Riley clicked through the screens. Melissa was never listed as a victim, just the person reporting the disturbance.

“That’s strange,” Aaron murmured.

“You said she’s a lawyer, right?”

“Right. Corporate law—contracts, powers of attorney—”

“Maybe she does pro bono cases on the side.” Riley crossed to the file cabinets, rifling through the top drawer of the cabinet nearest the wall and emerging with a manila folder. He scanned the contents quickly, recognition spreading across his face. “I knew her name was familiar. She was the lawyer of record for the victim in a domestic abuse case I investigated back in the fall, one of my first cases after making investigator.” Riley handed the file to Aaron. “I met her before the trial. Seemed nice. A little quiet. But man, when she got that abusive son of a bitch on the stand, she turned into a tiger. Ripped him apart. It seemed—personal, you know? Some lawyers do pro bono work for causes they care about.”

“So the client she’s gone to see may be an abused wife.” Aaron frowned. Where there were abused wives, there were big, mean, violent husbands.

He dialed Melissa’s cell phone again. Still no answer.

He was starting to get a very bad feeling.

MELISSA’S cell phone vibrated against her side as she climbed the porch steps at Dinah Harris’s house, the second call in the last ten minutes. Same digits on the display, but since she didn’t recognize the number she let voice mail take it.

She knocked on the front door. Usually, a knock brought Dinah’s two little boys running to be the first to answer. But all Melissa heard was silence.

A few seconds later, the faint tap of footsteps approached the door. It opened and Dinah Harris stood in the doorway, looking at Melissa with scared green eyes.

“What is it?” Melissa stepped forward, taking Dinah’s hand. “Has Terry been back here?”

“C-come in and have some tea.” Dinah grasped Melissa’s hand, tugging her into the small, drab living room, her eyes glassy and wide with dread.

The hairs on Melissa’s arms bristled, her inner alarm clanging a dire warning. But before she could take even a step back, someone moved out from the shadows behind the door and caught her arm in a cruel, painful grasp.

“Glad you could join us, bitch,” Terry Harris murmured in her ear.

Her heart bucking wildly as a surge of sheer terror flooded her veins, she tried to jerk away from him. But he only tightened his grip, his fingers digging brutally into her arm.

“No, you don’t,” he growled, dragging her through the doorway leading into the kitchen.

Melissa had always known a day like this would come. In some ways she’d been preparing for it for years. Self-defense training, therapy to build the emotional toughness to handle confrontations—even criminal profiling courses so she’d have the mental edge in a dangerous situation.

But no amount of forethought could keep her adrenal glands in check or erase the sometimes crippling memories now flooding her brain with a poisonous dose of unadulterated fear.

Terry pushed her into the wall next to the refrigerator. Her shoulder slammed into the sheetrock, pain flashing through her chest at the jarring impact. He didn’t give her time to do more than wince, advancing until he was inches from her face. His breath was fetid, laced with alcohol and a hint of marijuana smoke, but the enormous size of his pupils, black pools rimmed with only a sliver of blue, hinted he might be amped up on crystal meth. “No wonder a nosy bitch like you ain’t got a man of her own. Who’d have you? But that don’t give you no cause to mess with me and Dinah.”

“You’re right, Terry. I’ll just go now, okay? Message received.” She kept her tone reasonable, struggling for calm and focus. She tried to slide sideways away from him, but he shot his arm out, trapping her in place.

“Terry, please don’t—” Dinah grabbed his arm. Terry wheeled around, backhanding his wife. She cried out, stumbling back against the sink counter.

“Shut up and let me handle this!” Terry whirled around as Melissa tried to duck under his arm, grabbing her neck in one big, rough hand to pin her to the wall. “Stay put.”

Melissa froze in place, her pulse roaring in her ears. Her legs trembled wildly as she tried to remain completely still, aware that no amount of logic or reason was going to get through to a man so steeped in drugs and rage. But if she could keep him from killing her in the next few minutes, she might get the opportunity to wield the small vial of pepper spray tucked in the pocket of her jacket.

She was shaking so hard that it took a couple of seconds to realize the vibration she felt against her hip was coming from her cell phone. Her fingers itched to reach into her pocket and answer the call, but she didn’t dare make a move while Terry was watching.

But a moment later, Terry turned his head to check on Dinah’s location, perhaps afraid that she might make a move against him while his back was turned, though she sat in a crumpled, defeated heap in front of the sink, crying softly, her eyes averted. His inattention gave Melissa the chance she needed.

She slipped her hand into her pocket and pushed the call button on her phone, returning the call to whomever had just tried to ring her, then wrapped her fist around the pepper spray canister, flipping open the safety top.

Terry wheeled back around to her, squeezing her throat. For a second, black spots swam in front of her eyes and a dull roar deafened her to all but the sound of her rushing blood. Finally his grip loosened, and sound and sight returned with dizzying clarity, along with a raw ache in her bruised throat.

“You don’t have a man to teach you how things are supposed to be, do you? You don’t have no respect for what’s on us. Gotta make money to keep the house and feed the whining, ungrateful brats and a worthless, shiftless woman who treats you like a workhorse. Can’t even get a decent supper on the table on time.” He whipped around and looked at his wife, uttering a cruel epithet that made Melissa flinch, even though she’d heard it many times before from any number of angry, violent men.

His grip loosened more, giving Melissa the opening she needed. She pulled the pepper spray from her pocket and held it out in front of her, ready when Terry Harris turned back around to face her again. His eyes widened as he spotted the canister, giving him no defense when she pressed the trigger and squirted a burning stream into his face.

AARON gripped the steering wheel tightly, horror flooding him in cold greasy waves. Over the cell phone headset, instead of Melissa’s voice, he heard a muffled male voice spew pure venom, vicious and cruel. Suddenly, the voice cut off with a bark of pain, and Aaron had to jerk the steering wheel quickly to keep his truck from plunging down an embankment to his right.

He listened with growing panic, trying to make sense of what he was hearing. The bark of pain turned into howls of agony, punctuated by the sound of footsteps, still oddly muted. Was the phone in Melissa’s pocket?

Why hadn’t she said anything yet?

Finally, Melissa’s voice broke through the chaos. “Where are the kids?” The urgency in her raspy voice made his gut ache. Where was she? What was going on? Was she hurt? What kids?

“Go,” another woman’s voice answered, raw with tears. “I ain’t leavin’.”

So Riley had been right. She was with one of the abuse victims she worked with. He tried to remember what Hannah had told him about the phone call Melissa had received. His sister had said Melissa seemed worried but not panicky.

Had she walked into a siege, unaware?

The howls of pain continued in the background, behind the women’s low murmurs. Just before the first cry, he’d heard a sort of hissing sound. Pepper spray?

Pepper spray might slow the assailant down, but it wouldn’t be enough to stop him once the first wave of burning settled down. Melissa had to get out of there, and soon.

“If you stay here, he’ll kill you.” Melissa’s voice rose with urgency. “Where are the kids, Dinah?”

“Just get out of here,” Dinah answered. Aaron heard a tone in her voice he’d heard before, too many times. Hopelessness.

Get out, Melissa, he silently urged. You can’t save her.

He heard a crashing sound over the phone, and his nerves jumped wildly. He almost sagged with relief when he heard Melissa speak again. “Are the kids in the house?”

“Just go!” Dinah’s voice rose hysterically. There was a soft thud and he thought he heard a small gasp from Melissa, but he couldn’t be sure. The sound of the yelling man hadn’t seemed to get any closer.

Suddenly that noise faded, replaced by the faint sound of running footsteps. A few seconds later, the footsteps changed, grew hollow. A rustling sound, loud enough to make him wince, was followed quickly by Melissa’s breathless voice, loud and direct into the phone. “Call 911. Domestic assault in progress at 223 Old Borland Road in Gossamer Ridge.”

“Are you out of there? Get out of there!” he responded, his heart hammering against his chest wall. “Melissa?”

“Aaron?” Her voice cracked. He heard the sound of a door opening, then slamming shut. A soft “snick” of doors locking. “I’m in my car. Doors locked.”

Her previous words sliced through the haze of relief. Old Borland Road was about three minutes away. He gunned the truck engine. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I’m okay. Just get here. I’ll be waiting at the highway turnoff. And you’re going to need backup.”

“Let me call it in.” He grabbed the radio. “I need two cruisers. And get Riley Patterson out here.”

Melissa’s voice rang in his ear. “Have them stop at the turnoff.”

He added that direction to his call to dispatch. “What else do we need to know?” he asked Melissa.

She told him about her visit to her client in short, hoarse sentences. He could tell from her breathlessness and the shaky sound of her voice that she was suffering from mild shock.

“Did he hit you?” Aaron asked, his voice strangled.

“No. He—he manhandled me a little, but I’m okay.”

“I’ll get paramedics to look you over—”

“No, I’m fine,” she insisted, coughing a little as her voice rose. “I’m a lot more worried about Dinah and the kids.”

“How many kids?”

“Two boys, five and seven. I didn’t see them.”

“Is Harris ever abusive to them?”

“Not so far. It’s all been directed at Dinah. But they should have been there. Dinah doesn’t like to leave them with other people. She’s afraid Terry will try to grab them.”

Her fear was contagious. Aaron’s head filled with images that made him want to pull over to the side of the road and throw up his lunch. “Did you see any signs of a struggle? Any blood? Did you smell—”

“God!”

“I’m sorry, but we need to know what we’re heading into. Did you see anything to suggest the kids might be there?”

The sound of her Volkswagen’s engine died, and there was almost perfect silence on the other end of the line. “Melissa?”

“I didn’t see anything,” she said in a low voice. “I didn’t hear…anything.”

Like kids playing in a back room, Aaron thought. Hard to play when—

“She sounded so defeated,” Melissa said. “Like she’d given up. She didn’t even respond to my question about the kids.”

He pushed the dark images out of his head. One thing at a time. “Let’s just get Harris out of that house, and then we’ll deal with finding the kids.” As he heard sirens in the distance, he saw the turnoff to Old Borland Road looming down the highway. “I’m almost there, Melissa. And backup’s on the way. Can you hear the sirens?”

“Yeah.” Her voice shook.

He slowed into the turn, spotting her Volkswagen on the gravel shoulder ahead. He pulled up in front of her and cut the engine, halfway out the door before the sound died. He rounded the truck bed and headed for the driver’s door of the GTI.

Before he reached her, she pushed open the car door, stumbling a little as she emerged from behind the wheel. His breath caught at the sight of the ugly purple marks on her throat and the gray pallor in her shell-shocked face.

She locked gazes with him for a moment, her eyes huge and haunted. Then she flung herself into his arms.

“I DIDN’T SEE or hear the kids,” Melissa said.

Aaron stood beside her, his hand under her elbow to support her, although she’d stopped shaking soon after she’d hurled herself against him a few minutes earlier. After his reaction to her that morning, he hadn’t been surprised by his body’s surge of pleasure at the feel of her pressed hard against him. But the rage that surged through him when he examined her injuries had caught him completely off guard.

It was taking most of his self-control to stay still while she briefed the deputies he’d flagged down before they raced into a potential hostage situation with sirens blazing.

“As far as you could see, it was just Harris and his wife?” Blake Clayton asked. He was one of the four deputies sent by dispatch when Aaron had put in the call about the assault.

Melissa nodded. She pressed her body back against his, as if seeking his warmth and strength. He tightened his grip on her elbow, his thumb sliding comfortingly against her arm.

“You said you think he could be high?” Aaron asked.

“I know he’s done crystal meth in the past,” she answered. “He’s acting high. Completely out of control.”

“Was he armed?” he asked, kicking himself for taking so long to ask the most pertinent question.

“I didn’t see any kind of weapon. I don’t know.” Melissa looked up at him. “Dinah never mentioned weapons before. I think he just uses his fists.”

His fists were weapons enough, Aaron thought blackly, his gaze dropping to the darkening bruises on Melissa’s throat.

“We have to assume the children are still in the house, even if you didn’t see them.” He struggled to keep his anger in check. “We need to get him outside the house if possible.”

“Maybe I should go back there,” Melissa suggested.

Aaron’s gut clenched. “No.”

She frowned. “He’s angry with me. I hurt him. It could be enough to get him outside.”

“He may have a weapon. I’m not putting you in harm’s way.”

“I didn’t see a gun, and anything less than that, you could get to him before he got to me.”

He caught her arm and turned her to face him, loosening his grip when he saw her wince. He smoothed his hand over her arm where he’d grabbed her. “Someone already tried to set your house on fire,” he said more quietly.

She gave him a dark look. “Y’all thought that was me.”

“If Terry Harris set that fire, he obviously wanted you dead. I won’t give him a chance to get it right this time.” He eyed the other deputies, who were looking at him for direction. Would he ever get used to being the one with authority? “So, how else can we get Harris out of the house?”

“Do we know anything about his family? Mother, father—maybe a sibling?” asked Kendrick Dell, an earnest young rookie fresh out of the county police academy. Aaron gave him a quick look of approval, and the young man beamed with pride.

“His mother works at the chicken processing plant in Cedar Creek,” Melissa offered, referring to a town fifteen minutes to the east, across the county line. “I think they’re close. She was the only one in the family still speaking to him.”

“Would she help us arrest him, though?” Blake asked.

“She’s not blind to his problems. She didn’t stand in Dinah’s way at the custody hearing. He seems to listen to her.”

Aaron turned to Kendrick. “Get on the horn to Sunshine Processing in Cedar Creek. Ask for—” He looked at Melissa.

“Mary Mullins,” she supplied.

“Tell Mrs. Mullins we’ll send a car to pick her up. Don’t scare her. Just tell her we need her to talk to her son. Then go pick her up.”

Kendrick headed to the patrol car.

Riley Patterson arrived, to Aaron’s relief. Even though Aaron had more seniority with the sheriff’s department than his brother-in-law, Riley had more experience as an investigator. He’d been a deputy chief in Wyoming, taking the pay cut and the loss of rank when he chose to move to Alabama to be with Hannah. Riley was damned good at the job, and Aaron’s ego wasn’t so big that he couldn’t look to the man for help.

He pulled Riley aside and caught him up on what had happened. “Melissa thinks Harris’s mother may be able to get through to him. Kendrick’s gone to pick her up.”

Nodding approvingly, Riley looked at Melissa, who leaned against the side of Aaron’s truck, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “She okay?”

“Seems to be. He did a number on her neck, but she got herself out of there in pretty good shape.” She looked scared and sad. Aaron squelched the urge to give her a hug and forced his gaze back to his brother-in-law, lowering his voice. “I’m worried about the Harris kids. Melissa says the mother doesn’t usually let them out of her sight. But Melissa didn’t see or hear them in the house.”

Riley’s expression went grim. “Not good.”

“I keep picturing—” Aaron couldn’t say the words aloud.

“I know.” Riley laid a hand on Aaron’s shoulder. “But I took a quick look at Harris’s file before I came out here. He doesn’t have a record of hurting the kids.”

“Ordinary guys snap and take out their whole families.” Aaron glanced at Melissa again. “We can’t wait here forever.”

“We can have the A.B.I. hostage negotiation guys here in an hour. Maybe sooner by helicopter, if you think the situation is bad enough.” Riley followed Aaron’s gaze. “Melissa Draper is the closest thing we have to a fly on the wall in there. She knows the lay of the house, right? The players?”

Riley was right. Melissa was their best source. He should be grilling her, picking her brain for anything she might know that they could use to their advantage. He shouldn’t be trying to protect her at all costs—that wasn’t his job.

He crossed to her side. “You said you want to help us.”

She gave a silent but firm nod.

Aaron pulled his notepad from his pocket. “Then walk me through that house.”