Читать книгу Killer's Prey - Rachel Lee - Страница 13

Chapter 3

Rosa had evidently sized up the situation. After Jake settled Nora in the living room, he went to the kitchen and found Rosa already making her own brand of hot chocolate: very chocolaty, not very sweet and sometimes with a bit of chili pepper.

“No pepper today,” Rosa said.

“I think that would be wise.”

“She’s very sick.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“Not dying?”

“No, recovering.”

Rosa nodded and began to fill a plate with cookies from the cookie jar she never allowed to run empty. “Maybe I should add some extra milk to her chocolate.”

“I honestly don’t know.” Jake leaned back against the counter. “I like the way you make it.”

Rosa smiled. “My family recipe. I only put in a little sugar for you.”

Jake laughed quietly. He suspected Rosa’s preferred brew would be more like drinking black coffee than anything he had once thought of as hot chocolate. As it was, the way she made it for him it was nearly a bitter brew, saved only by the little sugar and small amount of milk she added for him. And he especially liked it when she spiced it up with a dash of chili powder.

Her version, he often thought, was probably closer to the way the pre-Colombians had used chocolate.

He wound up carrying a tray to the living room, and Nora’s mug had some extra milk and sugar in it. Breaking her in easily, he thought with mild amusement.

He set the tray on the coffee table, then turned to look at Nora. She had curled around herself in the armchair and closed her eyes. Maybe she was sleeping?

He retreated to his own favorite chair and sat, just studying her. He’d felt sorry for her most of the time they were growing up. The way she had to dress, that father of hers, the horrible scoliosis brace that must have been awful to wear...but mostly because there was enough about her that was different that she was an obvious target for the other kids.

He knew he’d damn well been her only protector a lot of the time, except for that other girl, Jody, who was now the mother of four and looking matronly at thirty. But Jody had been a bit of an outcast, too, for some reason or other.

He’d never really understood some of that stuff. At least not until the night Nora had asked him to take her to the senior prom and offered to sleep with him afterward. His own words still had the power to make him cringe, never mind how they had made her cringe. He’d been wanting to apologize for years, but that would have to wait. She clearly had more important issues right now.

Unlike most of the folks who had to depend on news coverage, as a cop he’d gotten a damn good look at the more detailed reports of what had been done to her, including the initial suspicion that she was covering an affair with a student’s parent to protect her job as a school psychologist. Obstruction of justice? A pretty thin thing to hold a woman on when she’d been nearly killed by a brutal rapist.

He couldn’t imagine what those cops had been thinking. But he knew enough of the details not to be at all surprised that she was finding recovery slow. There was just so much a human body could take, and she should have died in that ditch. The psychological trauma had to be beyond imagining. And now here she was, back in her hometown and living with that caveman the town called Deacon Loftis.

It was a good thing Jake had been raised in a different church because if he’d grown up listening to that man, he’d have believed God had abandoned the world to Satan. Or maybe that there was no God at all.

How was she supposed to deal with Fred Loftis on top of everything else?

But he could understand why she had come back here. No job. And worse, that man was out on bail. He couldn’t figure that one, either. How any judge would think Nora’s attacker shouldn’t be in a cell until the trial...

Well, not for him to reason why, but if he were Nora, he’d have wanted to get as far away from Minneapolis as possible, and without a job her options had clearly been limited.

She stirred a little and opened her eyes.

He found a smile to offer. “Rosa made her special hot chocolate for you. I warn you, though, it’s not very sweet.”

She astonished him with her non sequitur. “This chair smells good. Rosa deodorizes it, doesn’t she?”

“Yep. That commercial spray, once a week.”

“I like that smell. I used it all the time...before.”

He didn’t miss the slight hesitation, and wondered if her entire life had become a series of “before” and “after.” Then she stretched a bit, sat up and reached for the mug nearest to her. “Bitter?”

“Not as bitter as what she makes for me, but I’m sure it’s more so than what you’re used to.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

He saw that her hands shook a bit, just a bit, as she brought the cup to her lips. She took a cautious sip, then smiled. “That’s really good. I like dark chocolate.”

“Sometimes she puts chili pepper in it. That’s great, too, but we decided not to hit you with the full treatment your first time.”

“Probably wise. My stomach can react oddly at times.”

As could she, he thought. He was astonished, when he thought about it, that she had allowed him to touch her at all after that incident in the car. He’d even had his arm around her waist. The memory of that darkened his thoughts. He could feel the bones, could feel that she was way too slender for good health.

Her hair, once among her best features, didn’t look very good, either. He supposed that would come back as she recovered, but looking at her right now was enough to make him ache, thinking of the hell she had been through and the hell she still had to deal with.

Thinking about that left him with little to say. He didn’t want to talk about anything that distressed her, and right now that seemed to be about the only thing worth discussing.

“Daisy likes you,” he remarked finally, looking for neutral ground.

“Did she? How can you tell? I liked her for sure.”

“She tosses her head a bit when she doesn’t like her rider. Not that she gets rough or anything. She’s too gentle for that. But you can tell.”

“It was so much fun I didn’t want to stop.”

“Then we’ll do it again. Soon. Maybe even a little later today.”

“I’d love that,” she admitted. Then, more shyly, added, “I get my energy in spurts right now. I’m not wiped out for the day just because I get tired every now and then.”

“That’s good to know. Do you have any directions from the doctor you have to follow?”

“Take a couple of walks every day, as far as I can, and eat six times a day, small meals. I felt so bad leaving all that food on the plate.”

He could imagine where that came from, knowing her father. “Don’t. Rosa can’t imagine serving anything less, and I’m sure she saved the leftovers. You’ll probably go home with them.”

She surprised him with a little giggle. “How do you and Al manage not to gain weight?”

“Hard work.” He smiled back at her.

“So is being chief of police much different from being a deputy?”

“More work and a hell of a lot more politics.” He leaned forward, reaching for his own mug of hot chocolate, then sat with his elbows on his knees. “I think the city council invented new paperwork just for me. Then these guys don’t always get along well, and they try to put me in the middle. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do from there, but they try. The six of them are a private soap opera, but a lot less interesting.”

She nodded. “It seems silly having a separate police department.”

“It is. But Gage likes it. Even though he’s elected and doesn’t report to them, they used to give him a hard time. Now they reserve it for me.”

“Is it worth it?”

“Right now. I could change my mind at any moment.” He winked and was glad to see another smile. “Gage would take me back.”

“It’s good to know that.” She sighed and rested her mug on her thigh. “I’m trying to decide if I should look for someplace to live.”

“Your dad giving you trouble?”

“Not yet. But he hasn’t changed a bit. It’s like...” She bit her lip, clearly uncertain if she should speak, but finally the words burst out. “It’s like exchanging one nightmare for another. It’s like being a child all over again.”

And that hadn’t been a happy time for her at all. He didn’t need her to say it. “That’s not good.”

“But I guess I need to find a job, too. He wants me to work at the pharmacy but I...” She trailed off and shook her head. “I’ll figure out something, but it’s not going to be that.”

He was glad to see the spark in her. “Your father is a handful, all right.”

“He should have been born in the nineteenth century,” she said vehemently.

“I never thought of it that way, but you’re probably right.”

“I know I am. I got away, and amazingly enough there’s a whole world out there where women don’t have to bow and scrape, where people can actually have a good time without feeling like sinners. Of course, I’m just waiting for him to tell me none of this would have happened to me if I’d just stayed home like a good girl. That sin brought this all down on me.”

Rage began to seethe in Jake, and he could feel every muscle of his body tense. “If he ever, ever, says that to you, let me know. I’ll have more than a few words for him.”

Her look grew forlorn. “What if he’s right? What if I hadn’t gone to Minneapolis?”

He cussed then, words he was sure her father wouldn’t like. Maybe words she still wasn’t used to hearing. He didn’t give a damn. “Bad things happen to good people. They just happen because life is random. Blaming yourself for being in the wrong place makes as much sense as blaming yourself for being born. Trust me on this, Nora. It could have happened to anyone, including a nun. So don’t even edge near those thoughts.”

“It’s hard to avoid them.”

He figured it would be. He had ten years of experience in law enforcement, and he’d heard that kind of self-blame before. In Nora’s case it was augmented by the blood-and-thunder pulpit pounding she had grown up with. God rewarded the good and punished the bad.

“I’ve seen a lot of good people get hurt,” he said evenly. “Kids. Kids who never had a chance to do anything wrong. What does a six-year-old do to deserve leukemia?”

She didn’t answer, but sat staring down into the mug on her lap. Finally she asked in a small voice, “Then how do you figure it?”

“Bad things just happen. If there’s ever any fault, it’s with the person who does the bad thing. It certainly isn’t with the people they hurt.”

“But I don’t even know why that man attacked me!”

“You may never know. He may never explain it. His lawyer is sure going to tell him to be quiet about it.”

“So how do you explain people like him?”

“I have to believe there’s something wrong with them. Most of us stop ourselves from doing bad things even if we happen to think of them. A few of us don’t. The whole difference is whether we act on those things. This guy acted. And he’s going to prison for a long time.”

“I hope so.”

He fell silent, realizing that she had to work through this in her own way. Hammering it for her wasn’t going to help.

But it made him furious to think he might take her home today to a man who could blame her for this. Her own father, for the love of Pete. The one person who should be on her side more than anyone else.

The phone on the table beside him rang. “Excuse me.” He answered it and immediately shifted into another gear.

“Nora, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to take you home. Something’s come up at work.”

Something he sure as hell didn’t want to tell her about.

* * *

Nora arrived home with enough rice and pulled pork to feed both her father and herself a large dinner. Rosa had insisted, and Nora hadn’t wanted to argue. It was a generous offer, and might take some of the sting out of her dad when he got home, probably still angry that she had refused to come to work for him today. As if she could have stood at a register for much more than ten or fifteen minutes.

She guessed he thought life was going to carry on as if she had never left. Of course, it couldn’t. Any chance of that had died when he’d blamed her for her mother’s death, claiming she had died because Nora had gone away to college and hadn’t been able to take care of her.

Nora knew better than that, but the ensuing fight after the funeral had been ugly enough for an entire lifetime.

What the hell had she been thinking, coming back here? Surely she hadn’t hoped the man had changed. As a psychologist she knew how unlikely that was. Could she have even for one foolish moment have thought he had? All she knew was that she had become desperate, and maybe she hadn’t been thinking clearly at all.

But she couldn’t stay in Minneapolis, not while that man was still there. Not when he’d whispered more threats on the phone to her. Panic had driven her more than anything. And where else could she have gone? When she got well enough, she was going to find another job, far away from here, but in the meantime... In the meantime, her resources were too limited.

She sagged in a chair at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands. For a little while today, with Jake, she had tasted a normal life once again. She had enjoyed herself riding Daisy. She’d had a normal conversation with someone, although she was still a little surprised it had been with Jake.

Just yesterday she’d been appalled at seeing him, wishing as she had wished so long ago that she never had to see him again. Then today... Well, today had certainly been a surprise.

Although perhaps no surprise that he had offered to defend her against her father. He’d done that kind of thing so often when they were in school. In that regard he evidently hadn’t changed: defender of the weak and picked on.

But she absolutely couldn’t imagine how he could stop Fred Loftis from being Fred Loftis. The man was as set in his ways and his beliefs as if they’d been poured in concrete at his moment of birth.

And she wished something hadn’t come up, that she could have ridden Daisy once more today. Somehow it had carried her out of herself to a place she had almost forgotten, a place where she was glad to be alive.

But Jake had promised they would do it again soon. She was counting on that.

* * *

Jake walked into the sheriff’s office, still in mufti because he hadn’t wanted to upset Nora by putting on a uniform. He was immediately waved back to Gage Dalton’s office.

Gage sat behind his desk, one side overloaded with a stack of papers, the other side burdened by a computer. In between there was a battered nameplate that identified him as sheriff and looked as if it had fallen to the floor countless times.

“You’ve taken an interest in Nora Loftis,” Gage said without preamble.

Well, of course, the whole damn town probably knew by now. If he hadn’t been seen picking her up, if folks didn’t know he’d gone to Denver to get her, Maude still would have mentioned to someone that they’d been in the diner together last night. Life was like that here.

“I’ve known her all my life,” Jake answered, settling in one of the two wooden chairs in front of Gage’s desk.

“I’m not questioning you, Jake. Fact is, I have only a vague memory of her as a child. She seemed to blend into the woodwork and say very little. But I do know Fred Loftis. Nora gets my sympathy for that alone.”

“He’s a harsh man.”

“To put it mildly. Now to the point. After you expressed interest in the case, I very nicely asked the Minneapolis P.D. to keep us informed. They told me that they discovered this morning that Cranston Langdon slipped his bracelet.”

Jake tensed. He’d feared that when Gage had called him in, mentioning that he had a concern about Nora. The concern had been itching along his nerve endings since the call. “I was afraid that’s what you wanted to tell me.”

“He cut it off last night. Then before they could start checking, he was gone. Apart from what he did to Nora, this is one scary guy. He went after his wife last night, presumably because she was able to state unequivocally that Nora had never met the man. Anyway, the wife is unconscious, probably comatose, and our rapist and would-be killer is on the loose.”

“What’s the likelihood he could find her here?”

“Damned if I know. I’ve got the guys in Minneapolis scouring everything they’ve got to find out if it was ever mentioned anywhere in public that she came from this town. They don’t think it’s likely. Are you willing to bet on that?”

“Hell, no. She probably had friends who would know, if nothing else.” Jake’s voice became a low, almost savage growl.

“Me, neither. But I don’t want to scare Nora out of her skin unless it becomes necessary.”

Jake leaned back, squashing his fury, trying to sort through more logical thoughts. Getting angry wouldn’t fix a damn thing, and might lead him to foolish action.

“They’re sending us the guy’s description and mug shots. We can get them out. You know strangers stick out around here.”

“Except at the truck stop.” Plenty of strangers passed through there. “I guess we should give Hasty the mug shot.” Hasty owned the truck stop.

“I guess so.” Gage drummed his fingers on the desk. “I hate shadow boxing.”

“I’d have thought you’d done a lot of it in the DEA.”

“That’s why I hate it.” Gage smiled crookedly, the burned side of his face barely moving. Long ago, as a DEA agent, he’d been targeted by a bomb. “There’s no guarantee this perp will have any idea where to look for Nora. There’s also no guarantee that he won’t. And if he could slip his bracelet, he’s no dummy.”

“My main concern is protecting Nora,” Jake said flatly. “To hell with the rest. Living in that house with her father is hell enough, and he’d be no damn good in a crunch.”

“Stashing her could be good, but stashing her would mean telling her why we want to hide her somewhere. Do you think she could handle that?”

“I think she’s a lot stronger than even she realizes. She should be dead. She survived being accused of obstructing justice to protect herself and her rapist. She’s a mess right now, but she’s a survivor.” Jake shook his head. “You’re right, though. I don’t want to scare her needlessly.”

“Then we got us a problem.” Gage sighed and shifted in his chair, a grimace of pain crossing his face. Jake had gathered that the bomb had done more than burn him. It had also injured his back and left him with a permanent limp.

“I think she’s as tough as you are,” Jake said.

The remark surprised Gage. For a moment he froze. Then he shook his head. “I spent a long time getting to sleep at night by tossing down a couple of whiskeys. I doubt that young woman is drinking anything stronger than lemonade.”

“Not in that house.”

“I don’t know how to figure Loftis in this. Does he care for his daughter? If so, how much?”

“Nora seemed to think that he’s going to blame her for the attack, claiming she sinned by finding a normal life for herself.”

Gage swore quietly. “Somebody tell me why men like that never meet an untimely end.”

That almost surprised a laugh from Jake. He wasn’t used to hearing Gage talk that way.

Suddenly Gage leaned forward. “Okay. I’m going to talk to my wife, Emma. I bet she can offer Nora a job at the library, doing something that won’t wear her out too much. Give her a little income. Maybe she can get out of that house then and she won’t be alone, at least at work. In the meantime, we get everyone to put eyes and ears on for strangers. Quietly. And hope to God we’re wasting our time.”

Jake was far from a happy camper when he left a few minutes later, but he was glad that Gage was taking this so seriously. He sat outside in his car for a few minutes, trying to decide just how much of a threat there really was to Nora. This was damn near the back of beyond, hardly a blip on the map. Truckers came through here only because the state highway provided a shortcut to the interstate.

But it was not totally off the radar. Who could guess how many people Nora might have mentioned her hometown to? Or what sort of information about her Cranston Langdon might be able to access?

Nobody. The guy was clearly crazy. He had to have known that attacking his own wife was only going to deepen his troubles. Apparently he either didn’t care, or wasn’t capable of caring. Hell, if people feared consequences, there’d never be a murder.

Sorely troubled, he sat a while longer, watching pedestrians stride along the sidewalks, everything looking so damn normal he couldn’t believe how much had changed by the insertion of one wounded woman into his life.

Nothing looked the same anymore. Nothing. All because of Nora.

And dammit, he had to do something more to keep an eye on her than rely on the loose cordon Gage was instituting. A whole lot more. But just what? How could he insert himself further into her life? She’d warmed to him a bit over the past twenty-four hours, but he doubted she wanted him camped on her doorstep.

And then there was Fred Loftis. He’d have to find a way around that man or be forbidden to set foot on his property.

He paused in midthought, as it struck him that he seemed like an odd choice for Fred to have sent after Nora. They weren’t friends. Far from it. Fred could have asked anyone from his church.

So why the hell send the chief of police? The more Jake thought about it, the more disturbed he was by what had initially seemed to be nothing but a neighbor’s request.

What the hell was Fred Loftis up to? Did he know something about that long-ago night and what Nora had done? What he had done? Had asking Jake been intended to cause more pain?

Or was it Fred’s way of reminding his daughter that she was a sinner?

Damn! He wanted to pound the steering wheel. He wished like hell he could read minds.

But he couldn’t. And he was beginning to have a horrifying feeling that Nora might be tangled in more than one spider’s web.

He had to figure out something. Anything. And soon.

* * *

Nora sent a few text messages to friends back in Minneapolis, assuring them she was okay but was careful to avoid telling them where she had gone. Denver was the closest she had come to telling them her plans when she left, but she imagined none of them suspected she was here. After all, she’d made no secret of where she had come from, and no secret of her problems with her father. She doubted any of them would think she had come home.

She could hardly believe it herself. What was she doing here in this house, a house that still echoed with angry words spoken so long ago, when her father had insisted her mother had killed herself because Nora had gone away to college to live a sinful life? Him shouting those damning words, and her shouting back that if anything had made her mother suicidal, it had been life with a harsh, judgmental man who wouldn’t even allow her a single thought or act of her own.

A man, she thought bitterly now, who had gotten a dishwasher when he no longer had a woman to clean up after him. A dishwasher! Her mother had asked for one once, when she often had tons of dishes to do after contributing to a church supper, when her hands had become arthritic and the job had begun to pain her, and the answer had been, “Idle hands...”

Yeah, idle hands. Her mother’s hands had never been idle, even when they got so bad she could no longer do her crewelwork or her knitting. Nora had stepped in as much as possible with the chores, but the desire to escape that house had overwhelmed her, too. College had been her way out. There had been none for her mother.

Maybe her father was right. Maybe her leaving had taken away her mother’s last support. Maybe she had left Gretchen Loftis feeling hopeless. Certainly, her mom had been left without anyone to buffer her against her dad.

Nora, at least, had often provided him another object for his endless sermons and criticisms. With Nora gone, Gretchen must have born the full brunt.

God! She couldn’t afford to think that way. She had to remind herself that when she announced she was leaving, her mother hadn’t offered a word of protest. Not one sound, unlike Fred, who had told her she was on the path to hell.

No, Gretchen had helped her daughter pack. Had taken her to the bus station. What wrath that must have brought down on her head.

Nora felt tears seeping out of her eyes but she didn’t wipe them away. Gretchen had wanted her daughter to escape. Of that she was certain. But whether that had anything to do with her mother’s final act of despair, there was no way to know.

So maybe she was responsible, at least in part. But not fully. Never fully. Not with Fred Loftis in the picture.

God, what was she doing here? Had she sunk so low she had to come back here? Couldn’t she find enough strength to stand on her own two feet?

Escaping Minneapolis made sense, at least until that man was in prison. And yes, she was still very weak from her injuries and needed time yet to regain her strength. But surely she could have gone somewhere else.

Agitated, she rose and walked through the house. No pictures of her or her mother remained. They had been erased as if they had never been. Even the wedding photo showing a young Gretchen and Fred had vanished.

Why the hell had her father told her to come back here? Some vestige of genuine caring? Or just the sense that he had to do something that would look good to the people whose opinions he really cared about?

She would never understand that man. Never understand how he could care so much about some things and so little about others. How he had become so hard and implacable.

How had he become so righteous and wrathful and so lacking in compassion? Had he been raised that way? She would never know, as she knew nothing about him except what he showed her in any passing moment. If he had a past he never mentioned it. He might have sprung out of the ground as a fully formed adult for all she knew.

She had to get out of here. A glance at the clock told her he would probably be coming home soon. He generally took an afternoon break then returned to the pharmacy as the evening business picked up and remained until closing.

But where would she go?

Anywhere. Anywhere at all.

Once again grabbing her jacket and the key, she left the house. Walk slowly, she reminded herself. One easy step at a time or she wouldn’t get anywhere at all. There was the library, if she wanted relative quiet, or Maude’s if she wanted coffee.

But there’d be too many people at Maude’s, even at this time of day.

So, walking as slowly as an elderly lady, she set out for the library. She could hole up there at least until her dad went back for his evening shift. It was a much longer walk, but if she managed it, she’d have something to feel good about.

And she desperately needed something to feel good about.