The Littlest Witness
The Littlest Witness
Amanda Stevens
Nothing distracted true blue police detective John Gallagher from his work–certainly not a woman. Until a mysterious death led him to Thea Lockhart's door. One look in Thea's beautiful, haunted eyes and John wanted to run–from visions of love, marriage and forever! But Thea's little girl might be the only witness to murder…Betrayed by the law that should have protected her, Thea had given up her identity to save her daughter. The last person she should trust was a policeman–but something in John's steady gaze made her hope. If she told him the truth about her past, did she dare believe this man could be her future?
“I’m worried about your safety…Thea.”
Her name on his lips sent a thrill of excitement rolling through Thea. A shiver of something she didn’t want to name eased up her backbone and made her stomach flutter in awareness. She hadn’t been attracted to a man in years. And now, at the worst possible time, with the worst possible man, Thea was feeling things she had no business feeling.
“Why can’t you just go away and leave us alone?” she whispered.
His gaze softened, touched her lips, and Thea trembled, clutching her daughter’s hand as if Nikki were her lifeline.
“There’re some things about this case you may not be aware of. Have dinner with me and we’ll talk about them.”
Thea’s heart started to pound. That she was even momentarily tempted by his invitation proved how dangerous he was to her.
She glanced down at Nikki. Nikki looked back up at her, her expression hopeful. The fact that Nikki showed a reaction at all was a positive sign. A small miracle.
With Nikki on his side, how on earth could Thea continue to do what she knew she must—resist John Gallagher?
Dear Intrigue Reader,
A brand-new year, the launch of a new millennium, a new cover look—and another exciting lineup of pulse-pounding romance and exhilarating suspense from Harlequin Intrigue!
This month, Amanda Stevens gives new meaning to the phrase “men in uniform” with her new trilogy, GALLAGHER JUSTICE, about a family of Chicago cops. They’re tough, tender and totally to die for. Detective John Gallagher draws first blood in The Littlest Witness (#549).
If you’ve never been Captured by a Sheikh (#550), you don’t know what you’re missing! Veteran romance novelist Jacqueline Diamond takes you on a magic carpet ride you’ll never forget, when a sheikh comes to claim his son, a baby he’s never even seen.
Wouldn’t you just love to wake up and have the sexiest man you’ve ever seen take you and your unborn child into his protection? Well, Harlequin Intrigue author Dani Sinclair does just that when she revisits FOOLS POINT. My Baby, My Love (#551) is the second story set in the Maryland town Dani created in her Harlequin Intrigue book For His Daughter (#539).
Susan Kearney rounds out the month with a trip to the wildest American frontier—Alaska. A Night Without End (#552) is another installment in the Harlequin Intrigue bestselling amnesia promotion A MEMORY AWAY…. This time a woman wakes to find herself in a remote land in the arms of a sexy stranger who claims to be her husband.
And this is just the beginning! We at Harlequin Intrigue are committed to keeping you on the edge of your seat. Thank you for your enthusiastic support.
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Associate Senior Editor, Harlequin Intrigue
The Littlest Witness
Amanda Stevens
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amanda Stevens has written over twenty novels of romantic suspense. Her books have appeared on several bestseller lists, and she has won Reviewer’s Choice and Career Achievement in Romantic/ Mystery awards from Romantic Times Magazine. She resides in Cypress, Texas, with her husband, her son and daughter, and their two cats.
Books by Amanda Stevens
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
373—STRANGER IN PARADISE
388—A BABY’S CRY
397—A MAN OF SECRETS
430—THE SECOND MRS. MALONE
453—THE HERO’S SON
458—THE BROTHER’S WIFE
462—THE LONG-LOST HEIR
489—SOMEBODY’S BABY
511—LOVER, STRANGER
549—THE LITTLEST WITNESS
HARLEQUIN BOOKS
2-in-1 Harlequin 50th Anniversary Collection
HER SECRET PAST
CAST OF CHARACTERS
John Gallagher—His only witness to murder is a little girl who can’t speak.
Thea Lockhart—She’s given up everything for her daughter. Has she finally found a man she can trust?
Nikki Lockhart—The four-year-old silent witness.
Gail Waters—Her death is as mysterious as the missing people she hunted down.
Morris Dalrimple—The building manager would like to know Thea much better.
Superintendent Ed Dawson—How well did he know Ms. Waters?
Annette Dawson—Ed’s bitter wife.
Eddie Dawson—Ed’s estranged son is nowhere to be found.
Liam Gallagher—John’s uncle is in a hurry to close the case. Why?
Miles Gallagher—A cop with a faulty memory.
Bliss Kyler—Where did Nikki’s baby-sitter take her to play?
Mrs. Lewellyn—Does Thea’s neighbor suspect her secrets?
Rick Mancuso—The man who haunts Thea’s worst nightmares.
This book is dedicated with much gratitude and
appreciation to my editor, Natashya Wilson.
Contents
Chapter One (#ucb10a46c-2151-577b-a835-60253a3e407a)
Chapter Two (#u635206d6-c680-521a-8474-4068966aa891)
Chapter Three (#uc375d93d-7036-5ecd-a5ba-5fe51b4fa97c)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Thea Lockhart hated being out so late. Every big city had its dangers, but Chicago after dark seemed particularly perilous, perhaps because she didn’t yet feel at home there. Or perhaps because the weather was so cruel, even for November. The days were gray and dismal, spilling over into frigid nights that seemed to go on forever. Thea sometimes wondered if she would ever be warm again.
But the bone-deep chill came from neither the city nor the temperature. She could have gone anywhere—a southern city, a small town, even out of the country—and the demons would have followed, pursuing her to the ends of the earth if necessary.
Thea’s fate—and her daughter’s—had been sealed four months ago, when she’d fled Baltimore in the middle of the night, leaving behind her identity, her friends and family, and her ex-husband, dead on her bedroom floor.
Because of what she’d done, she and Nikki would be on the run for the rest of their lives. The Mancuso family, along with the rest of the Baltimore Police Department, would never stop looking for them. Thea had violated the Brotherhood, the Blue Wall, and for that she would pay dearly—if she was caught.
Shivering in her long wool coat, she hurried down Woodlawn Avenue, away from the university. The lake was only a few blocks away, and the icy wind whistled through the alleys, in sync for an eerie moment with an ambulance siren that built to a crescendo, then faded.
It was after midnight and the empty streets spooked her. A shiver of warning feathered up her backbone, but when she glanced over her shoulder, there was no one behind her.
Through a break in the buildings, she glimpsed the smokestacks from the power plant. They rose like dark guardians in the night sky, but if anything, the sight deepened Thea’s chill. She felt alone and vulnerable. Exposed.
Normally she would have been home long before now, but three of the five waitresses scheduled for the evening shift at the diner had come down with the flu, and Thea’s boss had pressed her into working a double.
As much as she hated not being home in time to bathe her daughter and put her to bed—an evening ritual that had become important to both of them—Thea couldn’t refuse. Zelda Vanripper, owner of Zelda’s Eatery in Hyde Park, had been good to her, putting her on the day shift so that she could be home with Nikki at night and asking few questions about her background.
So Thea had stayed and worked, and the extra tips would come in handy, as always. But after being on her feet since seven that morning, she couldn’t wait to get home to a hot bath.
Her apartment building was only a few blocks from the diner, but the last two blocks dragged on her frazzled nerves and weary muscles. Huddling in her coat as a frigid gust tore at her, she hurried her steps, more anxious than ever to be out of the cold and the darkness.
As she crossed East Fifty-fifth Street, her apartment building finally came into view, but the sigh of relief died on her lips. Blue lights from half-a-dozen police cars bounced off the sides of buildings and reflected in long wavering beams down the wet street, capturing Thea in a frail azure glow.
She stood frozen for the longest moment, a two-word prayer rambling over and over in her mind. Oh God oh God oh God.
They’d found her!
Her first instinct was to turn and flee, to disappear into the shadows before anyone noticed her. But her daughter was in that building, and nothing, not even her own freedom, could compel her to run. She would never let them take Nikki back to Baltimore, back to the Mancusos, who would raise her in the same corruption in which they’d raised their own son.
Don’t think about that now, Thea ordered herself, burying her trembling hands in her pockets. Don’t think about Rick or the gunshot or all that blood.
Now was definitely not the time to panic.
Head down, shoulders hunched against the wind, she hurried along the sidewalk. When she drew near her building, she could see the area was cordoned off with yellow tape. Several policemen, uniforms and plainclothes, clustered around something in the street, almost directly in front of the building’s entrance.
Thea’s heart rocketed against her ribcage. Bile rose in her throat as she strained to see through the wall of policemen. Please, God, she prayed desperately. Let Nikki be all right.
If anything ever happened to her daughter, Thea wasn’t sure how she would cope. Nikki was her whole life, a sweet damaged angel who had been put through hell because of her parents. Thea would do anything, anything to protect her.
But what if she was too late? What if Rick’s family had somehow found them, and Nikki had tried to get away and…
Almost running now, Thea saw one of the officers step out of the way, and for the first time, she glimpsed the body lying on the pavement. Relief rushed through her when she saw it was a woman and not a child who lay motionless at the officers’ feet. But in the next instant Thea realized with guilty compassion that the victim was someone’s daughter. Her next of kin would be getting that terrible phone call, probably within the hour.
Lenore Mancuso’s grief-stricken face flashed across Thea’s mind, but she quickly shoved it aside. She wouldn’t think about Rick’s mother now, either.
Slowing, Thea hung back from the policemen, hoping they hadn’t seen her. The cold air frosted their breath as they talked and laughed and went about their grisly business with the same disconnection Thea had always found so chilling in Rick.
Teeth chattering from the cold and from nerves, she walked past them, her head still bowed. But as she approached the stoop, one of the officers called out, “Hey, you!”
She hesitated and looked over her shoulder.
“Yeah, you. Come over here.”
Her heart still pounding, Thea turned and slowly descended the steps. The officer met her at the bottom. He was one of the uniforms, middle-aged and heavyset, his face puffy and lined beneath the bill of his rain cap. His poncho billowed in the wind as he lifted his flash-light in her direction.
Automatically Thea turned her face away, but before he could switch on the beam, another car drove up and someone shouted, “Gallagher’s here.”
The man beside her muttered, “About damn time.”
Thea hoped the newcomer would distract the officer so that she could slip away, but he turned to stare down at her in the rain. “You live in this building?”
Thea hesitated, then nodded.
“Out kind of late, aren’t you?”
“I was just coming home from work.” She bit her lip, trying to control the chattering of her teeth. “Wh-what happened?”
“Someone took a dive off the roof,” the officer told her dispassionately. Then, “What’s your name?”
“Thea Lockhart.”
He carefully noted the information in his book. “Where do you work?”
“Zelda’s Eatery. It’s on East Fifty-seventh, near the university.”
Thea expected more questions, but the officer seemed to lose interest as the lights on the unmarked car that had just driven up were killed. They both watched as a man—Gallagher, she presumed—got out. He was tall and his shoulders beneath the heavy overcoat looked enormous. In spite of the cold and the rain, he wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves, and his coat flapped open in the wind, making him seem impervious to the brutal weather.
With grim deliberation, he surveyed the scene, his gaze raking the whole area—including Thea—before he walked toward the body. There was no mistaking who was in charge now. The crowd of officers parted for him, and Thea got a clearer view of the victim. She hadn’t expected so much blood. It reminded her of that night—
She staggered back a step and the policeman beside her caught her arm. “Hey, you okay?”
“I’m fine…”
But she wasn’t. Violence and death hit too close to home, and as ashamed as she was to admit it, her main concern was how to disentangle herself from the police. She couldn’t get involved. She felt sorry for the poor woman lying on the street, but she couldn’t afford to get caught up in a police investigation.
Trembling, she watched as Gallagher knelt and examined the body. He didn’t touch the victim, didn’t disturb the crime scene with so much as a stray glance, but for a long moment, he remained there, studying her face as if her last thoughts might be lingering somewhere on her frozen expression.
After several minutes he stood. “Who was the first officer?” His tone was deep, authoritative. Not cold exactly, but a voice belonging to a man Thea had no wish to confront.
“McGowan,” someone told him.
“Over here,” the man beside her called out.
Gallagher turned and started toward them. His features stood out starkly in the streetlight. Even the rain didn’t diminish the angles of his face, the broad nose, the full sensuous lips. His eyes were blue, which surprised Thea. She’d thought they would be dark, like his hair. The light color was particularly striking against his grave features.
He wore a suit beneath the overcoat, as if he’d taken the time to dress properly before coming out. But his cheeks were roughened with stubble, giving him a sinister appearance that made Thea’s stomach quiver in fear.
His gaze barely grazed her before he said to McGowan, “What happened?”
“Wait here,” McGowan told Thea. He and Gallagher took a few steps away from her, but the wind caught their voices and tossed them back at her. “Looks like a dry dive,” McGowan told him. “DCDS. Detective Cox found a suicide note in her coat pocket.”
“Any idea who she is?”
“Not yet. There’s no ID on her, but Cox has gone up to canvass the roof for a purse or wallet, anything she might have dropped before jumping.”
Almost inadvertently Thea’s gaze followed Gallagher’s to the roof of the building. She thought she could see someone up there now, and she shuddered as the shadow moved away from the edge.
“Who found the body?” Gallagher asked.
“The building manager. Claims he came outside just before midnight to walk his dog, and that’s when he saw the victim lying on the street. He checked for a pulse, didn’t find one and then went back inside to call 911.”
“Great,” Gallagher muttered. “Probably trampled all over anything resembling evidence.” He paused. “Just before midnight you say. How accurate do you figure he is on the time?”
“Fairly accurate,” McGowan told him. “He says he’d just finished watching an old episode of ‘Hill Street Blues,’ which comes on at eleven, but the closing credits hadn’t yet run. He lives with his elderly mother. He says she can corroborate his story.”
“How soon did you respond?”
“Torecelli and I were on the scene within ten minutes after we got the call from dispatch. We secured the area and radioed for backup.”
“The manager couldn’t identify her?”
McGowan shook his head. “Claims he never saw her before tonight. She’s not a tenant, and he doesn’t know how she got into the building, unless someone buzzed her in. The outside doors are always kept locked.”
That was true, Thea thought. But a policeman worth his salt knew how easy it was to obtain entrance to almost any unmonitored building. If someone wanted in badly enough, all he or she had to do was wait around until someone was either coming or going and slip through the unlocked door, usually unnoticed. Crooks did it all the time.
And so did murderers.
Thea shivered as she studied Detective Gallagher’s grim countenance. His gaze traced the angle of the building, studying the windows that faced the street. “What about eyewitnesses?”
“None so far. No defense wounds, either, that we could see. We bagged her hands in plastic because of the rain.” Thea knew that normally the police liked to use paper bags, because the lack of air with plastic could alter the evidence. But that was something she didn’t want them knowing she knew.
In fact, the less any of them knew about her the better, especially Gallagher. Thea had a bad feeling about him. A very bad feeling.
He turned and observed the street again, watching for a few minutes as the crime-scene unit finished taking pictures and then began scouring the ground around the body for trace evidence.
He glanced at Thea, then at McGowan. “Who’s she?”
“She lives in the building. Says she was just getting home from work.”
Gallagher nodded vaguely. “Might as well chalk the site when CSU finishes, although it won’t do much good if the rain doesn’t let up. I’m going up to the roof. Let me know when the coroner gets here. Establishing time of death is going to be a bitch in this weather.”
McGowan nodded and took off, leaving Thea standing alone to face Gallagher. She hoped he’d just go up to the roof and forget all about her, but when he turned and started toward her, she saw in his eyes that he had no intention of letting her get away so easily.
“I’m Detective Gallagher.” His gaze was direct, penetrating. If he noticed her trembling, Thea hoped he’d blame the cold. “And you are?”
“Thea Lockhart.”
“Officer McGowan said you live in the building, is that right?”
She nodded. “I was just coming home from work when he stopped me.”
“You work around here, Miss Lockhart?”
“It’s…Mrs. I’m a waitress at a diner near the university. I already gave this information to Officer McGowan.”
The detective’s piercing gaze met hers. “You weren’t home tonight?”
Thea shook her head, shoving her hands even deeper into her pockets. “I’ve been away since before seven o’clock this morning. I didn’t see anything.”
“No strangers lurking around the building lately? No loud arguments, anything like that?”
“No, nothing unusual.”
Gallagher nodded almost absently. “I wonder if you’d mind taking a look at the body. See if you can identify the victim.”
The request was courteous enough, allowing her to decline if she wanted to, but Thea knew she had no real choice. No matter how much she didn’t want to look at that poor dead woman, she mustn’t do or say anything that might make Detective Gallagher suspicious.
She nodded and followed him over to the victim. The woman was lying on her back, her face surprisingly unscathed from what must have been a horrendous fall. But as Thea looked more closely, she saw the cuts and the terrible bruising that gave the body an almost ghoulish appearance. Her arms and legs were at strange angles, too, the bones undoubtedly shattered.
“I’ve never seen her before.” But Thea had second thoughts almost at once. There was something vaguely familiar about the woman, but she couldn’t place her. Which was good. At least she didn’t have to tell an outright lie.
As if sensing her hesitation, Gallagher pressed, “You’re sure?”
She could feel his gaze on her and she tried to suppress a shudder. “I don’t remember seeing her around here before.” Thea paused, then couldn’t resist asking, “Do you really think she committed suicide?” Jumping from a building seemed like such a ghastly way to die, but then, so was a bullet to the heart. A sick feeling rose in Thea’s throat, but she swallowed it away as she glanced up at Detective Gallagher.
His gaze narrowed on her, and she thought for one heart-stopping moment he might have recognized her. Then he said, “Suicide’s a possibility. We’ll know more when we’ve done a thorough search of the area. Right now you’d better get in out of this rain. We’ll be in touch if we need you.”
Alarmed, Thea started to ask why he would need to contact her again, but then realized he and the other officers would begin almost immediately the grueling work of talking to everyone in the building, searching for potential witnesses. Goyakod, Rick had always called it. Get off your ass and knock on doors. He would have been a good cop if he hadn’t been dirty.
But Thea wouldn’t think about that now. She’d become an expert at compartmentalizing her emotions, and right now all she would allow herself to concentrate on was getting away from Detective Gallagher without arousing his suspicions. She was desperate to go inside and check on Nikki.
She took the card he handed her, trying to control the trembling in her hands. But he noticed and said softly, “It’s rough when you’re not used to it.”
If you only knew, Thea thought, but aloud she said, “I’m okay. I just need to be inside, out of the cold.”
He nodded. “If you think of anything that might help, call me at that number.”
Thea stuffed his card deep into the pocket of her coat, knowing all the while that Detective Gallagher would never get a call from her, no matter what. He was a cop, and that was all she needed to know about him. His badge made him one of the enemy.
SHE SEEMED AWFULLY NERVOUS for a bystander, John thought as he watched her at the front door of the building.
She dropped her keys on the stoop, and even from his position several yards away, he could see how badly her hands shook as she bent and picked them up. She started to insert her key into the lock, but then, realizing the door was already unlocked, she hurried inside. A pale blue scarf hid her hair while the oversize coat she wore wrapped her from neck to toe.
But even bundled up like that, John could tell she was a small woman. Petite, he supposed, would be the word. Her thin face was pale and translucent, her features—dark brown eyes, slightly crooked nose, full lips—almost fragile-looking.
There was something about her, apart from her obvious attractiveness, that intrigued him. She had the demeanor of a woman who had been badly frightened and was trying her damnedest to hide it. But if she didn’t recognize the victim, what did she have to be scared of?
His inherent distrust was working overtime tonight, he decided, scowling. A lot of people were nervous around the police. Maybe the real reason Thea Lockhart triggered his distrust was that she reminded him a little of his ex-wife.
Meredith hadn’t cared for cops, either. At least that was what she’d said the night she walked out. But then two months later, she’d married another one, leaving John to conclude that it was one cop in particular she hadn’t cared for. Even though they’d been divorced for nearly two years, her betrayal still rankled.
But Meredith Clark was no longer his concern, and Thea Lockhart was probably just the nervous type, someone who fell apart at the sight of blood. The only woman John had to worry about now was the Jane Doe lying mangled on the concrete.
“Where’s the building manager?” he asked the officer nearest him. “We’ll need to start knocking on doors ASAP.”
“He’s on the roof with Detective Cox,” the uniform told him. “Want me to radio up?”
“I’m headed that way.” John took another look at the victim. Had she jumped off the building of her own free will or had she been pushed? In spite of the note found in her pocket, John voted for the latter. His every instinct told him this was a homicide, and if his hunch panned out, the next forty-eight hours would be critical. After that, the trail would start getting cold. If a case wasn’t solved in the first two days, odds were good it would never be cleared. John knew that better than anyone.
“Hell of a night for a murder,” he muttered as the rain started coming down harder.
Chapter Two
The rain peppered John’s face as he stood on the roof, his presence as yet unnoticed. The wind was stronger up here, and he braced himself as he watched Cox’s flashlight beam moving about the area.
The roof was surrounded by a concrete safety ledge, about three feet high and six inches wide. Near the stairwell door and to the left, pallets of building materials and twenty-gallon drums had been stacked in preparation for resurfacing and waterproofing the deck, but the rest of the roof was clear and open. But even so, at this time of night and in this weather, the prospect of an eyewitness was pretty dim.
John’s gaze tracked his partner’s progression across the roof. Roy Cox was a fifteen-year veteran of the Detective Division. He and John had been working together for nearly four years now, and although they couldn’t have been less alike in temperament and investigative techniques, the partnership had worked out well. Whereas John was intense, almost obsessive about their cases, Roy was laid-back and soft-spoken, his west-Texas drawl as pronounced as it had been the day he’d left El Paso nearly thirty years ago.
He was a tall man, wiry and grizzled, with a handlebar mustache that might have looked more at home on a Texas range than it did on the streets of Chicago. A second man, the building manager, John guessed, dogged Cox’s steps, his gravelly voice muted by the rain and wind. John switched on his flashlight, catching the man in his beam. Wide-eyed and startled, he looked like a deer trapped in headlights.
Cox called out, “Hey, that you, Johnny boy? Glad you could finally make it. I reckon even you gung ho-types have trouble tearing yourselves away from a warm body on a night like this.”
John refrained from telling him that the only female in his bed lately was Cassandra, the temperamental Persian Meredith had left behind when she’d moved out. But Cox was his partner, and a nosy one at that; John suspected he already knew. “McGowan said you found a suicide note on the victim.”
“Damn straight we did.” Cox walked over and handed the bagged note to John. The words had been typed on a sheet of plain white bond paper.
“Short and sweet,” John muttered, training his light on the note.
“Just the way I like my women.” Cox grinned, his face pale in the cast-off glow from his flashlight. Water dripped from the brim of Cox’s cowboy hat, the battered one he always wore in inclement weather. “Looks like this is our lucky night, Johnny.”
“What do you mean?”
Cox held up a second plastic bag and aimed his flashlight beam on the contents—an expensive-looking beige handbag. “Found it on the deck over there by the wall. Victim must have dropped it just before she jumped. We’ve ID’d her from her driver’s license.”
“Who is she?”
“Name’s Gail Waters. She had a press pass…”
The name hit John like a physical blow. Stunned, he stared at his partner as a shock wave rolled through him. “Who did you say?”
Cox gave him a quizzical glance. “Gail Waters.”
Son of a bitch, John thought, trying to hide his surprise.
Cox rubbed the salt-and-pepper whiskers on his chin. “I’m getting some bad vibes here, Johnny-O. Are you trying to tell me you knew the victim?”
“I never saw her before in my life,” John answered truthfully. But he knew the sound of her voice. He’d talked to her on the phone less than forty-eight hours earlier, when she’d called the station wanting to interview him about his father’s disappearance seven years ago. It was a case that had not been solved to this day.
Gail Waters had been a reporter for and the managing editor of a small newspaper on the near north side of town. She specialized in stories involving disappearances and missing persons. Although she was a print journalist—and had taken pride in pointing out that fact to John—she had also been the co-producer of a cable show called Vanished!, which explored intriguing cases the police hadn’t been able to solve.
Why she’d suddenly decided to investigate Sean Gallagher’s disappearance, John had no idea. But her death had to be a coincidence. It couldn’t have anything to do with his father.
But even so, names from John’s past flashed like a strobe through his head: Ashley Dallas, the young woman whose murder Sean had been investigating at the time of his disappearance; Daniel O’Roarke, the man convicted of Ashley’s brutal murder, who now sat on death row; and John’s own brother Tony, who had been in love with Ashley at the time of her murder.
For some reason Gail Waters had wanted to dig up that old tragedy, expose secrets that had been buried for more than seven years.
And now she was dead.
A coincidence, John told himself again. But a cold finger of dread traced up his backbone as he stood in the icy rain.
“You want to notify the old man or should I?” Cox was asking.
The “old man” Cox was referring to was John’s uncle and their commanding officer. Liam Gallagher kept himself apprised of every investigation the detectives conducted under his watch. His knowledge of all the uncleared cases in his jurisdiction was nothing short of phenomenal, and John had always held his uncle in the highest esteem.
But now a tiny doubt began to niggle at him. Liam had worked on the Ashley Dallas case, too. Had Gail Waters talked to him about John’s father’s strange disappearance?
“Let’s hold off on that.” John stared at the note for a moment longer, then handed it back to Cox. “A type-written suicide note always worries me. I’d like to do a little more digging before we call in.”
Cox groaned. “I don’t like the sound of that. You’re going to get a hard-on about this one, aren’t you? You’ve got that look.”
“I’m going to do my job,” John said grimly. “And so are you. Until we get the coroner’s report, we’re going to treat this as a homicide investigation.”
Cox muttered an oath as his radio crackled. He pulled it from his belt and walked a few feet away to respond. John used the opportunity to examine the wall and floor of the roof at the spot from where he judged the victim had fallen. Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, he knelt and scoured the area with his flashlight, knowing all the while the rain had probably washed away whatever trace evidence, including fingerprints, that might have been left.
“Meat wagon’s here,” Cox called from the stairwell door. “You coming?”
“I’ll be there in a minute.” John stood and gazed over the side of the building. Down on the street, a handful of bystanders had gathered at the fringes of the yellow tape.
As if sensing John’s gaze, one of them, a man wearing a black parka, a stocking cap and a muffler covering the lower part of his face, glanced up at the roof. Even five stories away, John felt a tug of recognition.
He knew the man only as Fischer, an informant he’d used successfully in the past. John had no idea about the man’s real identity, but he seemed to have an uncanny knack for showing up at crime scenes, particularly the ones John was called out on. He suspected Fischer not only had a police scanner, but an inside line into the department. Whatever his connection, his information had proved invaluable in the past.
As John watched, Fischer turned and headed down the street, his shoulders hunched against the sharp blast of wind from the lake.
John rubbed the back of his neck where the hair had suddenly stood on end. Fischer always gave him a case of the jitters, although he couldn’t say why exactly. Maybe because there were elements of danger and distrust involved with all informants.
The door to the stairwell slammed shut in the wind and Cox disappeared. John saw that the building manager remained and had started across the roof toward him.
He was a short squat man, somewhere in his forties, who breathed in sharp, almost gasping puffs of air. In the dim light he looked eager and excited, his small dark eyes greedily taking in every last detail of the search.
“Detective, if I may be so bold…” Rain glistened in the fringe of brown hair that circled the man’s bald pate like a dingy halo.
“What is it?” John asked, annoyed at having his concentration broken.
“It’s something I, er, mentioned to Detective Cox, but he, er, didn’t seem to take much notice.” The man stuttered and stumbled over his words, as if extremely nervous. He wiped moisture from his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s over there.” He pointed to the stack of building materials near the stairwell door.
“What is?”
“I’m, er, not sure. Evidence maybe.”
John said sharply, “What are you talking about, Mr.—”
“Dalrimple. Morris Dalrimple. My friends call me Dal.”
“Why don’t you show me what you’re talking about, Mr. Dalrimple?”
The building manager touched his fingertips to his chin, then dropped his hand to his side. “I think I saw something. If you would, er, just shine your flashlight over there…a little more to your right…yes, that’s it. Right there. And then if you would, er, kneel, like you did earlier…”
John complied, although there was something about Dalrimple that was a little unsettling. To be honest, the man gave him the creeps.
John focused his light on the stacks of building materials. From where he knelt he could make out narrow channels running through the crowded pallets of drums. He didn’t see anything at first, but then he moved the beam back, playing it along one of the channels.
“Yes, there it is!” Dalrimple cried excitedly. He almost jumped up and down with glee. “I thought I saw something in there earlier, although Detective Cox couldn’t spot it. But if I may be so bold…tall people, er, tend to overlook a lot of things. You don’t concern yourself with places that accommodate only little people—like myself, for instance. I thought right off the space between the pallets might be a good place for someone to, er, hide, but Detective Cox was certain no one could fit in there. I must admit, since I, er, put on a little weight, it might be a bit of a squeeze—”
Dalrimple broke off in midsentence as John stood and strode to the pallets. He bent and angled his light into the long channel between the stacks of drums. Something was lying on the floor several feet inside. Lifeless eyes gleamed in the crisp beam from John’s flashlight.
John knelt and felt inside the channel. Using the flashlight as an extension, he dragged whatever was on the floor toward him, until he could reach it with his hand. His fingers closed around a scrap of fabric, and a tinny voice intoned, “Ma-ma” as he pulled a doll from its hiding place.
“Well, I’ll be!” Dalrimple exclaimed, gazing down at the toy in John’s hand. “How do you suppose that got in there?” He started to touch the doll’s mop of dark hair, but John jerked it away. Dalrimple looked crushed.
“There could be prints,” John felt obliged to explain. “You understand.”
“Oh, of course. I know all about, er, police procedure. Mama and I never miss an episode of ‘Cops.’ So what do you think about the doll, Detective? Is it evidence?”
“Possibly.” Walking back across the roof, he stood at the edge where Gail Waters had gone over and fixed his light on the stack of pallets. The channel between was tight, but as Dalrimple had suggested, a small adult could manage to squeeze inside. A child could do so quite easily. And if she had been hiding in the space earlier, she could have seen what happened without being detected.
It was possible he might have himself a witness, after all. And if Gail had been murdered, it was imperative that he find the owner of the doll as quickly as possible.
He turned to Dalrimple. “I’m going to need your help…Dal. This is very important.”
The little man almost glowed. “Well, er, of course. Whatever I can do to be of, er, assistance.”
“I’ll need a list of all the tenants in the building, and I’ll need you to flag the ones who have children. We’ll start with the families who have little girls under the age of, say, ten.”
Dalrimple’s brow furrowed. “That could, er, take a while. I’m not so good on the computer, and Mama doesn’t like to be disturbed once she’s gone to bed.”
John grasped the man’s arm. “The problem is, I don’t have a while. I need it now. Five minutes ago. You can help me out, can’t you, Dal?”
The man seemed torn for a minute, some internal conflict—no doubt involving his mother—causing myriad expressions to flash across his face. Then he nodded, resolved. “You can count on me, Detective. I’ll do whatever I can to assist you.”
“Good,” John said. “I’ll be sure to note your cooperation in my report.”
Dalrimple said solemnly, “Mama will be so pleased.”
ZELDA’S EATERY was closed on Sundays, and normally Thea loved to sleep in. She’d never been an early riser on weekends, but in spite of her late hours the night before, she was up by seven, tiptoeing around the apartment so that she wouldn’t awaken Nikki.
Mrs. Lewellyn was gone, having gotten up sometime after Thea went to bed and let herself out of the apartment. She’d been sleeping on the couch when Thea got home, and Thea hadn’t had the heart to disturb her. She made a mental note to call the older woman later and thank her for coming over the evening before on such short notice. Nikki’s regular baby-sitter had already made plans when Thea had called from the diner about working a double shift, but Mrs. Lewellyn had been more than willing to step in.
Back in Baltimore, Thea had never had to worry about child care. Nikki had been enrolled in a wonderful preschool, and when Thea was kept late at work, her stepmother, Mona, who was employed in the same office, was usually available to pick up Nikki. And on the rare occasions when Mona couldn’t do it, Kate Ramano, Thea’s best friend since high school, had readily stepped in.
Thea wondered what Kate and Mona thought of her now. She’d left Baltimore without a phone call to either of them. They had no idea where she and Nikki were, or the real story behind Rick’s death, although Thea knew they’d both have their suspicions. They knew what her life had been like after the divorce—the midnight phone calls, the threats, the stalking.
Rick had made her life a living hell, and both Mona and Kate had been wonderful friends through it all. But they were human. They’d have to wonder, at times, if Rick’s shooting had been self-defense or premeditated. Hadn’t they heard her say, more than once, how much she wanted him dead?
Shivering, Thea poured herself a cup of coffee, then clicked on the TV, leaving the volume on mute as she surfed through the cable stations, trying to find a local news broadcast. She’d seen no sign of reporters on the scene last night, thank goodness, but she could never be too careful. The last thing she needed was to have her face splashed across newspapers. What if the Mancusos saw her picture?
For a while last night, she’d worried that Detective Gallagher might have recognized her from a wanted poster or police blotter or even a newspaper. Rick’s murder, along with the disappearance of his ex-wife and daughter, was bound to have made front page in Baltimore. She couldn’t be certain the story hadn’t been picked up by one of the wire services and carried nationally, as well, even though she’d seen no mention of it in the past four months.
When she and Nikki had first arrived in Chicago, she’d scoured the papers and listened to news broadcasts daily, but the Windy City had its own headlines, its own problems with domestic violence.
And by the time Thea had had the nerve to venture out of their motel room and look for a newsstand carrying the Baltimore Sun, the whole grisly affair had been knocked from the pages by a bribery scandal involving high-ranking city officials. There’d been no mention of Rick’s murder, no mention of the police corruption Thea had suspected for months.
She’d been left to imagine what the headlines must have been: VINDICTIVE EX-WIFE MURDERS DECORATED POLICE OFFICER. COP KILLER FLEES BALTIMORE WITH FOUR-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER. STATEWIDE MANHUNT FOR COLD-BLOODED MURDERER.
Thea sometimes still had a hard time believing how much her life had changed. She’d been a business major in college and had gone to work at her father’s private-investigation firm right after graduation. She hadn’t been interested in field work, but she had been interested in numbers. She’d run the office efficiently, cutting costs and increasing profits with her innovative ideas. Now she worked as a waitress in a diner. She’d once been a respected member of the chamber of commerce. Now she was a wanted criminal.
Deep in thought, she started violently when the doorbell sounded. Her heart skidded against her chest as her head swiveled toward the door. Who in the world would be coming to see her at this hour on a Sunday morning?
Telling herself it was probably Mrs. Lewellyn wanting to chat for a few minutes, Thea hurried to the door. But when she glanced through the peephole, she gasped in dismay.
Detective Gallagher stood in the hallway, his blue eyes so piercing she could have sworn he had the ability to look directly through the door, straight at her.
Frantically she glanced around. Was there anything incriminating in the apartment? Should she hide? Pretend she wasn’t home? Grab Nikki and make a run for it?
Smoothing her hands down the sides of her chenille robe, Thea tried to get her nerves under control. There was no reason to panic. Detective Gallagher was conducting a police investigation that she had inadvertently become a part of. All she had to do was convince him that she had seen nothing last night. She had no connection to the dead woman.
But suddenly the woman’s picture flashed on the TV screen, and for a moment, the smiling attractive face triggered something in Thea. Not recognition exactly, but a feeling that at sometime, somewhere, she and the dead woman’s paths had crossed.
The doorbell sounded again, and casting a glance toward Nikki’s bedroom, Thea patted down her tangled dark hair and pulled open the door.
Detective John Gallagher was even taller than she remembered, and more formal looking than she would have expected for a Sunday morning, unless of course, he was on his way to church. But somehow Thea doubted that. He had the appearance of a man who lived and breathed his investigations. Police work would be his religion. She knew the type all too well.
He was dressed in a dark gray suit, a starched white shirt and a silk tie that were obviously expensive—and made Thea immediately suspicious. She knew what cops made, what they had to do to afford clothing like his. A shudder of warning rippled through her.
“Good morning.” His tone was cordial, but he didn’t smile. His expression remained impersonal, his eyes very blue and very cold.
In spite of his grim demeanor, he was a strikingly handsome man, Thea realized. The kind of man who almost always spelled trouble.
He gazed past her shoulder into the apartment. “May I come in? I have a few questions I need to ask you.”
Dear God, what kind of questions? What in the world was he doing here? Thea frowned. “But I told you last night—I didn’t see anything. I wasn’t even home.”
One dark brow lifted slightly. “But your little girl was, right?”
His words were like a dagger through Thea’s chest. Her heart seemed to stop for a long painful moment, and she could almost feel the color draining from her face. “How did you—”
“May I come in? This won’t take long.”
He didn’t wait for her acquiescence this time, but strode by her into the apartment, turning to face her when she remained motionless at the open doorway. Left with no option, Thea closed the door and followed him.
“Sorry to interrupt your coffee.” He nodded toward the steaming mug on the cocktail table. “Smells good.”
Thea merely looked at him. She had no intention of offering him coffee or anything else. This wasn’t a social call, and the sooner she got rid of him, the better.
How in God’s name had he known about Nikki? The Mancusos had far-reaching contacts, but still…
Thea laced her fingers together, trying to stop the trembling. She couldn’t let him see how nervous she was. Couldn’t give herself away. For Nikki’s sake, she had to perform as she had never performed before.
“How did you know about my daughter?” She got to finish the question this time, amazed that her tone came out just right—part curiosity, part irritation at having her peaceful morning interrupted.
“We obtained a list of all the tenants in the building with children. Little girls, to be exact.”
“But why?” For the first time, Thea noticed the brown paper bag he carried in one hand. Fear crept up her backbone. She lifted her gaze to meet his. “Detective Gallagher, what’s this about?”
In answer, he turned toward the television. “I see you’ve been watching the news this morning. You probably already know that the woman who died here last night was Gail Waters. She was a reporter for a small newspaper called the Press.”
“A reporter?” What had a reporter been doing in this building? Who had she come to see? Had she somehow found out about her and Nikki?
“The paper is local, but some of her investigative pieces also ran on a cable news channel.”
Gail Waters had been on television? Was that why she’d looked familiar? Thea desperately wanted to believe that was the case. There was no reason to assume a reporter’s presence in this building had anything to do with her and Nikki. And yet…
Detective Gallagher was here in her apartment, asking questions about her daughter. Obviously he thought there was a connection.
Thea lifted her chin. “As I told you last night, I don’t recall having seen her before. I don’t understand why you’re here, Detective Gallagher.”
His gaze, intent and probing, fell on her once more. “As you can imagine, there’re still a lot of unanswered questions concerning her death.”
“But I thought her death was a suicide. The officer I spoke with last night said a note had been found on the body.”
“And as I said last night, suicide’s a possibility, but we’re not ruling out homicide. Not yet, at least.”
“Homicide? You think someone murdered her?” Thea felt momentarily faint. “Who would want to kill her?” she asked weakly.
He gave her a curious look. “Reporters are a lot like cops. People sometimes don’t like the questions we ask.”
Thea didn’t say anything to that, but she remembered the list of people Rick had claimed wanted him dead. And yet the last person he’d suspected was the one who finally did him in. Thea’s stomach churned in warning. “Whether it was suicide or murder, I don’t see what her death has to do with my daughter or me.”
“I’m coming to that.” He took something from the bag and held it up for her inspection. “Do you recognize this?”
Thea’s knees almost buckled when she saw the doll. The black curls, the brown eyes, the dimpled cheeks were very much like her daughter’s, which was exactly why she’d bought the doll for Nikki. It had been an extravagance they could ill afford these days, but her daughter had been so enchanted with the resemblance when they’d seen her in a shop window. Thea hadn’t been able to resist. Until then, Nikki had been largely unresponsive to just about everything. The doll, named Piper after a character in Nikki’s favorite book, had struck a chord deep inside the child that no one, including Thea, had been able to touch since that terrible night four months ago.
Nikki loved that doll. She would never have willingly parted with it. So how had Detective Gallagher come to be in possession of it? And what did the doll have to do with Gail Waters’s death?
Chilled, Thea stared at the doll in Gallagher’s hand, forcing her expression to remain placid. It was imperative that he not connect the doll to Nikki. It was crucial that the two of them remain untouched by his investigation. “You came here at this hour of the morning to ask me about a doll?” She let a trace of irritation creep into her voice.
“Do you recognize it?”
Almost absently Thea rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Detective Gallagher watched her intently, studying her as if she were a bug under his microscope. But Thea had learned a lot about bluffing from her father and from the other investigators who had worked for him. “That doll could belong to any little girl in this building. I can’t imagine why you think it’s my daughter’s.”
His eyes narrowed on her. He didn’t appear fooled by her evasions. “I found this doll on the roof last night after a woman had fallen to her death. Does it, or does it not, belong to your daughter?”
On the roof! My God…
A fresh wave of fear washed over Thea, but she shook her head, denying her thoughts. This was crazy. Nikki would never have gone up to the roof. She wasn’t even allowed out of the apartment without Thea’s permission, and besides that, her daughter was terrified of the dark. There was no way on earth she would have gone up to that roof alone last night, and Thea couldn’t imagine that Mrs. Lewellyn would have taken her.
So how had the doll gotten up there?
“You look surprised, Mrs. Lockhart. Why is that, if the doll doesn’t belong to your daughter?”
Cornered, Thea chewed her lip. “The doll is a common one. I’ve seen it in several stores. Nikki does have one similar to it, but that doesn’t mean this one is hers. It couldn’t be, because there is no way she would have been on that roof. She’s only four years old.”
“The stairs go all the way to the roof,” Detective Gallagher pointed out. “Even a four-year-old can climb stairs, and you said yourself, you were out all evening. How can you be sure your daughter wasn’t on that roof?”
“Because her baby-sitter would never have allowed it.” But a vision of Mrs. Lewellyn snoring peacefully on the sofa flashed through Thea’s mind. Was it possible Nikki had left the apartment while the elderly woman slept? But why would Nikki do something like that? It was totally out of character for her. There was no good reason Thea could think of that would have compelled her daughter out of the apartment and up to the roof.
Either the doll wasn’t hers or she’d lost it somewhere, in the hallway perhaps between here and Mrs. Lewellyn’s apartment, and someone had picked it up. Someone else had taken it to the roof. That was the only possible explanation.
If only she hadn’t had to work late last night. Then she would have been home with Nikki herself, and Detective Gallagher wouldn’t be here asking all these questions, and she wouldn’t be assailed by all these doubts. This awful premonition that somehow she and Nikki both were tied to the dead woman.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” she insisted.
Detective Gallagher stared at her for a moment longer, then shrugged. “Sorry I wasted your time.” He started for the door, but before Thea could breathe a sigh of relief, he turned back to face her. “Maybe we should ask your daughter about last night. Just to be on the safe side.”
“She’s sleeping, and I really don’t want to wake her. She…hasn’t been feeling well lately.”
“I see.” His eyes were dark and fathomless as his gaze rested on Thea. He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but a sound from behind her drew his attention, and Thea knew without turning that her daughter was standing in the doorway. She also knew that once Nikki saw the doll in Detective Gallagher’s hand the pretense would be over.
But Piper had disappeared behind the detective’s back, out of Nikki’s sight. Thea thought for a moment he was actually going to leave without questioning her daughter, but then in the next instant, she told herself she should have known better. He was a cop, wasn’t he? No one was sacred. Not even a wounded four-year-old girl.
“You must be Nikki.” His tone lowered, became almost gentle. He walked past Thea before she could protest and knelt in front of her daughter. “Your mother and I were just talking about you. I’m Detective Gallagher.”
Nikki was still dressed in her pajamas, looking soft and sweetly rumpled, her cloud of dark hair hanging in tangles down her back. She stared at Detective Gallagher, her brown eyes wide with fright.
Thea moved quickly to Nikki’s side and knelt beside her, smoothing back her hair. “It’s okay, sweetie. He’s not going to hurt you.”
She gave Gallagher a warning glance, and he smiled reassuringly at Nikki. A rather devastating smile, Thea thought fleetingly.
“Why don’t you call me John? That’s what my friends call me. Some of them even call me Johnny.”
How ludicrous. The man looked nothing like a Johnny.
Nikki’s gaze silently probed his features, searching for signs of violence. Rick had taught their daughter well, too. Thea’s heart twisted, watching her.
Still kneeling in front of Nikki, John said, “I wonder if you could help me out, Nikki. I found a pretty little doll on the roof last night. Come to think of it, she looks a lot like you. I rescued her before she got rained on, and now I’m trying to find out who she belongs to.” He brought the doll around and laid her across his knee.
Nikki made a guttural sound deep in her throat and snatched Piper from his knee, clutching her tightly to her chest as she backed into the tiny hallway.
“I take it she belongs to you,” John said softly. He glanced at Thea, his gaze cold and accusing. “What was your doll doing on the roof, Nikki? Did you leave her there?”
Nikki looked near tears. Her eyes were like two huge O’s. She continued to back away from Detective Gallagher, until she was trapped against the wall. Then she slid down to sit on the floor, curling into a soft protective ball around Piper.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” John said, making no move toward the little girl. “I just need to ask you a few questions.”
Shaken by her daughter’s reaction, Thea pushed past the detective and gathered Nikki into her arms. Nikki whimpered, burying her face in Thea’s shoulder as she clutched Piper tightly. “She can’t answer your questions, Detective,” Thea said coldly. “Why don’t you just go away and leave us alone?”
He rose slowly. “I didn’t come here to frighten your little girl. I’m sorry she’s scared. But this is a police investigation. A woman is dead, and it’s my job to find out what happened to her. If your daughter knows something—”
“She doesn’t know anything. Please, she can’t help you.” Thea’s arms tightened protectively around Nikki as she gazed up at Detective Gallagher, trying to appeal to the softness she’d glimpsed in him earlier, fervently hoping the compassion had been genuine. “I don’t know how her doll got on that roof, but I do know Nikki wasn’t up there last night. She couldn’t have been. She didn’t see anything.”
“Why won’t you let her tell me that?”
Thea drew a long trembling breath and said, almost in a whisper, “Because she can’t. She can’t tell you anything. My daughter can’t speak, Detective.”
JOHN STOOD at the window in Thea Lockhart’s living room while he waited for her to come out of her daughter’s bedroom. She’d reluctantly told him to help himself to the coffee, and he’d complied, the aroma too tempting to pass up this early in the morning. The rich steamy brew was a far cry from the lukewarm sludge at the station, and he savored the taste as he stared out the window.
The building across the street blocked the view of the lake, forcing his gaze downward. The yellow crime-scene tape had torn loose in the wind, and sometime during the night the rain had changed to snow; now a light layer of it hid the bloodstains. Passersby on the street barely gave the spot a second glance. They didn’t know or didn’t care that a woman had died there last night, had sucked in her last breath while plunging five stories to the ground. Had the name of her killer been on her lips when she died?
Scowling, John turned away from the window. He couldn’t shake the nagging suspicion that Thea Lockhart and her daughter knew more about Gail Waters’s death than they were telling. Why else was Mrs. Lockhart so nervous around him?
Mrs. Lockhart. John glanced around the apartment, taking in the shabby furniture, the basket of laundry shoved in one corner, the coloring book and crayons scattered over the dining-room table. Gold hoop earrings had been dropped into a glass bowl on the cocktail table, and a pair of white walking shoes rested near the front door.
There wasn’t a trace of masculinity anywhere, including the laundry. A pink uniform lay folded on top of the basket, while the leg of a child’s pajama bottom hung over one side and a lacy white bra spilled over the other.
He stared at the bra for a moment as something familiar, and unwanted, stirred in him. Meredith had been gone for some time. He was over her, and he’d long since come to terms with his failed marriage. But a woman’s underthings were a reminder of the intimacy and closeness he’d once had, and he couldn’t deny a certain hollowness in his life now. A loneliness he didn’t often admit to.
He glanced up and caught Thea Lockhart watching him from the hallway. She knew what he’d been staring at, and a faint blush tinged her cheeks. She lifted her chin as she came into the room.
She’d changed from the chenille robe into a pair of worn jeans and navy blue sweater. Her short dark hair was combed behind her ears, but a riot of curls spilled across her forehead. She shoved it back impatiently.
“How’s your daughter?” John asked, his gaze inadvertently traveling over her. She was very thin, her skin smooth and soft-looking, but she had a toughness about her, a wariness in her dark eyes that made him think she was no innocent. She’d been around. Somehow he liked that about her.
“She’s playing with her doll for now, but she’ll want breakfast in a few minutes.”
John took the hint. He’d need to leave before then. “Why did you lie to me about the doll, Mrs. Lockhart?”
She looked surprised for a moment, as if his question had been unexpected. Then she shrugged. “I didn’t lie. I wasn’t sure it was Nikki’s. And I still can’t imagine how it got on the roof last night.”
He lifted a brow as he watched her move to the tiny kitchen and pour herself another cup of coffee. She held up the pot. “Can I freshen yours?”
He shook his head. “No, thanks, I’m fine. This is good, by the way.” He toasted her with his mug, and she inclined her head slightly. She didn’t move back into the living room, but remained in the kitchen with the bar between them.
John left his post by the window and crossed to her. She looked vaguely startled again as he looked down at her, and she averted her gaze as she sipped her coffee.
“You still don’t think your daughter left the doll on the roof?”
She frowned. “Of course I don’t. You saw how shy she is, how…easily frightened. There’s no way she would have gone up to that roof alone, and I know Mrs. Lewellyn would never have taken her up there.”
“Maybe that’s something we need to ask Mrs. Lewellyn.”
“I intend to,” Thea snapped. Then, as if having second thoughts about her angry tone, she set down her coffee and gazed at him in earnest. “Look, even if Nikki was up there—which I know she wasn’t—what is it you think she can do for you? She can’t tell you anything, Detective.”
John put down his own cup and leaned his arms on the bar, trying to appear relaxed and unthreatening. “Has she always been like this?”
For a moment he thought she wouldn’t answer. That same fierce protectiveness he’d witnessed earlier came over her features, and she frowned. “No. Just since her father died.”
“I see.” A widow. That might explain a lot, John thought, and not just the lack of male paraphernalia in the apartment. It might also explain the glimmer of desperation he’d seen in Thea Lockhart’s dark eyes, and the fear. And the fact that she seemed to have a hard time looking him in the eye, acknowledging the unmistakable physical attraction that clung to their glances, their voices, the air around them. She might feel guilty about that, he decided, although there was no reason to. He didn’t intend to act on his impulses and he was certain she didn’t, either.
“How did her father die?” he asked carefully.
“An accident. A…tragic accident. Nikki hasn’t gotten over it yet, and I…don’t like to talk about it.”
“I understand. But if there’s even a slim chance that Nikki was on the roof last night, Mrs. Lockhart—”
“Thea,” she said quickly. Their gazes met for a moment, and then hers darted away. She poured the rest of her coffee down the sink and rinsed out the cup. “You can call me Thea.”
“That’s a very pretty name.”
“It’s for my grandmother,” she said, and then looked as if she wished she could take it back.
He smiled, trying to put her at ease. “Does your grandmother live here in Chicago?”
She almost smiled, too, as if recognizing his tactic. “My grandmother’s been dead for years, Detective.”
“John.” When she gave him a reluctant glance, he said, “I’m named for my father, Sean.”
“You’re Irish?”
“Very.”
“An Irish cop. That’s almost a cliché, isn’t it?”
“In that case, my whole family is a cliché.”
John had never seen a person’s demeanor change so rapidly. She’d been wary before, even a little frightened, but now her expression took on a frozen look, as if she’d donned a mask to hide her true identity, her real feelings. He’d wanted to put her at ease, but instead, her armor had grown thicker. She said stiffly, “You come from a family of cops.” It wasn’t a question, but a flat emotionless statement.
John shrugged. “Guilty.”
“I imagine you look out for each other. Take care of each other.”
John frowned at her tone. “Occasionally,” he said, thinking about his brothers. Actually he would be the last person Nick would come to for help, and Tony…well, Tony was another story.
Thea said quietly, “I’d like you to go now, Detective. There’s really nothing my daughter and I can do to help you.”
She was good, John realized suddenly. Too damn good. She’d distracted him from the questions he’d been intent on asking about her daughter, and all the while, convinced him he was the one in control.
He stared down at her, forcing her gaze to meet his. Her dark eyes were deep and unfathomable, a mysterious blend of fear, guile and cunning. A very dangerous mix.
“Just one more thing, Mrs. Lockhart.”
One brow rose slightly, and he could see that the fingers clinging to the tiny gold chain around her throat trembled. His gaze dipped, in spite of himself, to the curves beneath her sweater, and an image of that lacy white bra leaped to his mind. He could almost see her in it, her breasts straining against the fabric, his thumb stroking her through the silk—
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said hoarsely.
His gaze shot to hers. I doubt that, he wanted to tell her. Then again, maybe she did know. Maybe that was why the blush on her cheeks had deepened, standing out starkly against the ivory of her complexion. Her brown eyes flashed with sudden fire, and John thought absurdly that if he hadn’t met her under these circum-stances…if she wasn’t a recent widow…if his marriage hadn’t made him more than a little careful…
“You’re thinking that if Nikki was on that roof, you might have an eyewitness to Gail Waters’s death. It would be cut and dried. You could close your case. But you’re wrong, Detective. My daughter wasn’t on that roof. She couldn’t have been.”
“But what if she was?” John challenged, ignoring the flicker of fear in her eyes. “What if Gail Waters didn’t commit suicide?”
She gasped slightly, her face going paler.
“What if she was murdered and your daughter saw it all? What if she is the only one who can identify the killer? Have you thought about that, Mrs. Lockhart?”
Chapter Three
After John left Thea that morning, he drove to the county morgue, housed in the huge Chicago Technology Park off Harrison. He’d called earlier and was expected.
“What’s so important about this case that I had to come in here to do the autopsy on a Sunday morning?” the assistant medical examiner demanded as she shoved a file in an already bulging drawer and slammed it shut.
John shrugged. “I figured you didn’t have anything better to do. Vince is out of town, isn’t he?”
Her eyes narrowed. “How did you know that?”
“Heard it through the grapevine.” John wasn’t about to admit to his ex-wife that he occasionally kept tabs on her new husband. Nor was he going to confide in her the possible significance of the Gail Waters case. Meredith hadn’t been very supportive when his father had disappeared seven years ago. She’d suggested Sean might have been involved in something shady or even a cover-up to protect his youngest son, Tony, from suspicion in his girlfriend’s brutal murder.
John had not taken kindly to Meredith’s insinuations, although, if he was honest with himself, he’d have to admit the occasional doubt about his father’s disappearance had crossed his own mind. Sean Gallagher wouldn’t have been the first cop to go off the deep end, nor the first man to walk out on his family. He and John’s mother, Maggie, had not exactly had a marriage made in heaven. And what with Tony’s troubles back then…
John forced his thoughts back to the present, letting his gaze rove critically over his ex-wife. He hated to admit it, but she looked good. “So how’s the baby?” he asked with only a tinge of…what? Envy? Jealousy? Self-pity?
Meredith laughed softly. She shoved back her unruly hair as she sat down at her desk. The action reminded him of Thea. They were both small women, both had dark hair, but the resemblance ended there. Meredith’s skin was olive, Thea’s like porcelain. Meredith could be a real bitch at times; Thea was…still a mystery.
“What can I say?” Her green eyes sparkled. “He’s tiny and beautiful and absolutely wonderful. A perfect male specimen, if I do say so myself.” Her gaze met John’s, and for just a split second, something that might have been regret flickered in her eyes. Then she said bluntly, “You look like hell, John. What have you been doing—living at the station?”
“Lot of active cases,” he muttered.
“What else is new?” She stood and pulled on a white lab coat that had been draped over the back of her chair. Her expression became sober and professional. “So what are we looking for here? Anything specific?”
“The usual. The victim took a dive off a five-story building, so I’ll want to know about brain contusions.” Not many lay people, including some murderers now serving prison time, knew that the bruising of the brain from a fall was different from that of a blunt-force injury. If Gail Waters had been bashed in the head before she hit the pavement, an autopsy would reveal it.
“Let’s do it then,” Meredith said wearily. “I’ve got a baby to get back to and a husband who promised to be home by dinner.”
Her meaning wasn’t lost on John. He’d missed more meals in the six years they’d been married than he cared to remember, and they both knew it had nothing to do with Meredith being a lousy cook. Even though she’d had her own impossible hours to deal with finishing her residency, John had been the one, more often than not, to phone with the apologies and excuses. After a while he hadn’t even bothered with those.
He shouldn’t have been surprised, then, when she’d announced one night that she was leaving him, nor when she’d admitted to—flung it in his face—a two-year affair with the man she was now married to. A man who had once been John’s friend.
“Why should you feel so betrayed?” she’d screamed at him that night. “I’m the one who’s had to put up with your mistress all these years.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I’ve never cheated on you.”
“I’m talking about that damn job of yours. You’re a cop first and a man second, John. And being a husband isn’t even a lousy third. I pity the next poor woman who falls in love with you.”
“John?” Meredith’s insistent voice brought him back to the present. She gave him a strange look. “You ready?”
“Just waiting for you.” He strode toward the door of her office. “Let’s get this over with. Like you said, you’ve got a husband and a baby to get home to.”
“And you?” Her gaze was more than a little curious.
He shrugged. “I’ve got a case to solve. That’s what I’m good at, remember?”
“I remember you were good at a few other things, too,” she said softly, her tone almost tender. “It just wasn’t enough.”
AFTER BREAKFAST Thea left Nikki coloring at the dining table while she went down the hall to Mrs. Lewellyn’s apartment. The building, with its stained carpeting and peeling paint, was old and badly in need of refurbishing, but that was why Thea could afford the rent.
The newer lakefront high-rises on Lake Shore Drive were way out of her price range, as were the redbrick town houses cropping up near the parks. Thea had chosen the university neighborhood because of its relatively low crime rate, and because the diversity made it easier to blend in. She’d thought of everything when she and Nikki had moved in here—except the possibility of a woman being murdered in their building.
Standing in the dimly lit corridor, Thea kept an eye on her own apartment door while she waited for the elderly woman to answer hers.
When Mrs. Lewellyn finally opened the door, her eyes widened with pleasure. “Why, Thea, I didn’t expect to see you this early. You got home rather late last night, didn’t you, dear?” She had the barest trace of an English accent, which suited perfectly her prim-and-proper demeanor. In spite of her stooped shoulders, she was several inches taller than Thea.
“It was just after midnight,” Thea said. “I want to thank you again for coming over on such short notice to stay with Nikki.”
Mrs. Lewellyn brushed aside her gratitude. She was dressed for church, Thea noticed, in a dark blue suit and matching pumps. Her gray hair, as always, was pulled into a bun at the back of her head. “It was my pleasure. You know I adore Nikki. She’s never any trouble at all.” She glanced past Thea into the hallway. “Where is she?”
“She’s in the apartment, coloring.” Thea cast another glance at her door. “I have to get back to her, but I wanted to talk to you in private for a moment.”
Mrs. Lewellyn’s brows rose. “About Nikki?”
Thea nodded. “I need to ask you something, Mrs. Lewellyn. Did you and Nikki leave the apartment last night?”
“Leave the apartment? No, dear. Why do you ask?” A worried light dawned in her eyes, and she put a hand to her heart. “You heard about that poor woman who jumped off the roof last night. That’s what has you so upset this morning, isn’t it?”
Thea shivered. “How did you hear about it?”
“It was on the news earlier. And I saw Mr. Dalrimple in the laundry room. Evidently the police have enlisted his help. He’s strutting around like a rooster in a hen coop.”
So that was where Detective Gallagher had gotten his tenant list and how he’d known Thea had a daughter. That was also why he’d been at her door first thing this morning.
Thea told herself it was foolish to blame the building manager for her current predicament, but truth be told, she’d been uneasy about Morris Dalrimple ever since she’d moved into the building. His gaze was just a little too admiring, his tone a little too interested, and once, when she and Nikki returned from grocery shopping, Thea was almost positive she’d caught him coming out of her apartment.
He’d told her he had been knocking on her door, claiming a clause in her lease needed her initials, but Thea wasn’t convinced. He’d looked guilty as she signed the paper, his face all flushed and his beady little eyes not quite able to meet hers. Thea knew he had a master key to all the apartments. What was to prevent him from coming and going as he pleased while tenants like her were at work or at school?
Shuddering, she said, “Nikki’s doll was found on the roof last night.”
“On the roof!” Mrs. Lewellyn looked genuinely shocked and more than a little concerned. “How on earth did it get up there?”
“I don’t know.” Thea paused. “I was thinking that if you and Nikki had left the apartment last night, maybe to come over here for a few minutes, she might have dropped the doll in the hallway. Someone else could have picked it up and taken it to the roof.” She knew she was grasping at straws, but there had to be a logical explanation. And Nikki being on the roof in the dead of night simply wasn’t logical.
“I think I may know what happened,” Mrs. Lewellyn said slowly. She wrapped a strand of pearls around her finger as she gazed pensively down the hallway. “I’ll bet you that girl took her up there.”
“Bliss?”
Scorn flashed in Mrs. Lewellyn’s eyes, and just a hint of triumph. She didn’t like Nikki’s regular baby-sitter and had not been shy in voicing her opinion. The girl’s too flighty, she’d said more than once, And not at all reliable. You should see the kind of people who hang out in her apartment. You don’t want her influence on Nikki, Thea dear. I’m more than happy to watch the child while you work.
But as much as she appreciated Mrs. Lewellyn’s help, Thea knew how trying a four-year-old could be, especially one with Nikki’s problems. And Bliss was wonderful with her, so patient and loving.
“You think Bliss took the doll up to the roof?” Thea asked doubtfully.
“Why, I’m certain that must be what happened. She was very secretive when I got to your apartment last evening. She huddled with Nikki, whispering to her and laughing, and I even heard her say something about a picnic that afternoon. But when I scolded her for taking the child outside, she just fluttered those fake eyelashes at me and said something like, ‘Why, Mrs. Lew, I have no idea what you’re talking about. We haven’t left the building all day, have we, Nikki?’ She can be very disrespectful, that girl.”
“So if the two of them had a picnic on the roof yesterday afternoon, Nikki could have left her doll up there then.” That would explain a lot, and Thea immediately warmed to the idea.
“I’m sure of it,” Mrs. Lewellyn said firmly. “Because Nikki couldn’t find her doll at bedtime last night. You know how she refuses to go to sleep unless Piper is tucked in safe and sound beside her, but when I put Nikki to bed, I couldn’t find the blasted doll anywhere. Nikki was very upset. I finally had to make her some warm milk, just so she’d calm down enough to drift off.”
As upset as Thea was over Bliss’s disobeying her orders, she was also intensely relieved. If Nikki hadn’t been on the roof last night, then she couldn’t have seen what happened to Gail Waters. She wasn’t a witness, as Detective Gallagher had claimed, which meant she wasn’t in any danger.
Unless, of course, the Mancusos found them. And Thea had no intention of letting that happen. “I’ll call and ask Bliss about it when she gets home.”
“She’s gone off to visit her parents,” Mrs. Lewellyn reminded her. “Or so she said. But that boyfriend of hers is still hanging around. I saw him on the stairs this morning. He gives me the willies, I don’t mind telling you. All that long hair. That awful scruffy beard. He looks as if he hasn’t bathed in weeks.” She paused, shuddering delicately. “You know, if I were you, I’d really set my foot down, Thea. Bliss had no right taking Nikki up there. That roof is a dangerous place. Why, the child could have fallen off just like that poor woman—”
“I know,” Thea cut in, not wanting Mrs. Lewellyn to finish her words. The visual in her mind was already too graphic. “I intend to speak to Bliss the moment she gets home.”
“If you need any help with Nikki, all you have to do is ask, dear.”
“Thank you.”
Mrs. Lewellyn seemed reluctant to let her go, and Thea knew the old woman was probably lonely. She had no family that Thea knew of, nor any friends who came calling. Except for her church work, Mrs. Lewellyn seemed as isolated as Thea and Nikki. For a moment Thea wondered if the older woman had something in her past that she was hiding from, too.
Not likely, Thea decided as she turned down the hall to her apartment. Mrs. Lewellyn was probably just an old woman who had outlived most of her friends and family.
Something that might have been self-pity tugged at Thea’s heart, and she had a vision of herself at that age, alone, bitter and still running. And what about Nikki? What kind of life had Thea sentenced her daughter to?
In a way Nikki was in her own prison. The trauma of that night, seeing her father dead on the floor, seeing the gun in her mother’s hand, had sent the child running to her own dark place. A silent place.
Dr. Nevin, the child psychologist Nikki was seeing, had warned Thea that her daughter’s treatment might take a long time. It could be months, even years, before Nikki trusted enough, felt safe enough, to speak. Until then, all Thea could do was be patient.
But sometimes it was so hard, seeing her daughter struggle. Thea wanted to fight Nikki’s battles for her. She wanted to crawl into that cold quiet place and slay every last one of her daughter’s dragons. After all, she was the one who had caused Nikki’s trauma, and if she could take back that night, if she could change the course of events that had led to Rick’s death, she would.
But her ex-husband would have killed her that night if she hadn’t pulled the trigger on her father’s gun. He might even have hurt Nikki. And that Thea could never allow.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that Mrs. Lewellyn had closed her door, but an uneasiness stole over her that she couldn’t seem to shake. Maybe it was the thought of Rick and what she’d done, but it almost seemed as if someone was watching her. Judging her.
You’re losing it, Thea scolded herself as she approached her apartment door. Sensing an invisible watcher was nothing new. Thea had long since become accustomed to glancing over her shoulder.
“You’re safe,” she muttered under her breath. No one was watching her. And now that she had an explanation for how Nikki’s doll had gotten on the roof, she and her daughter were in the clear with the police.
Once she told Detective Gallagher what had happened, there would be no reason for their further involvement in the case. There would be no point in his coming around anymore. He would be out of their lives for good. And her and Nikki’s secret would remain safe.
But as she inserted the key into the lock, a chill crawled up her backbone, and she couldn’t help looking over her shoulder once more. The hallway behind her was empty, and Mrs. Lewellyn’s door was still closed. No one was about.
But Thea couldn’t shake the chill. She stepped quickly into her apartment and closed the door, but not all the way. She listened through a tiny crack, and almost instantly, she heard the telltale click as a door somewhere in the hall was closed.
FIRST THING Monday morning John went around to his uncle’s office at the station and knocked on the open door. “You wanted to see me?”
Liam Gallagher glanced up from the report he’d been reading and motioned John into his office. Pushing sixty, Liam was still a handsome man with a shock of snow-white hair and bright blue eyes, which reflected his humor almost as often as his quick temper.
He was a seasoned detective who’d started out as a beat cop on Chicago’s south side nearly forty years ago, just as his father had before him and his younger brother, Sean, had after him. Liam’s son, Miles, worked in Narcotics. They were, as John had told Thea Lockhart, a family of cops.
Liam waited until John was seated, then said, “I asked Lieutenant McIntyre to send you down here because I wanted to talk to you about the report you and your partner filed yesterday morning.”
“You mean the Gail Waters case?”
Liam stuck a pair of bifocals on his broad Irish nose and glanced down at the paperwork on his desk. “McIntyre said you’d requested a follow-up investigation.”
“Is that a problem?”
His uncle glared at him over the rims of his glasses. “You know it is. We’re short over two hundred detectives in this division, and only half the homicides in this city get solved. I don’t have the time or the manpower to waste on a case that should be cleared.”
“I know, I know.” John sighed, all too familiar with the shortage of detectives and the stack of uncleared murder files waiting on his desk. He’d pulled a double watch for so long now he couldn’t remember what it was like to get home at a decent time or have more than four or five hours of uninterrupted sleep at night. He plowed an impatient hand through his hair. “I’m not convinced Gail Waters killed herself.”
“The evidence says otherwise.” Liam opened the folder containing John and Roy Cox’s reports and the preliminary autopsy findings. “No defense wounds, no hair, tissue or blood beneath her nails. No trace evidence or fingerprints at the scene. Toxicology tests clean. Contrecoup contusions to the brain, which means she was killed by the fall.” He closed the folder with an unmistakable finality.
If it walks like a suicide, quacks like a suicide…
John shifted in his chair. “Look, we spent most of the day yesterday canvassing the building and interviewing the tenants. We haven’t even had a chance yet to talk to her co-workers and family, let alone go through all her files. She has a database with hundreds, maybe thousands, of names from missing persons and fugitive reports she collected from every major police department in the country. One of those names could be a lead, but it’ll take days to go through that list.”
“And if you don’t find anything?”
John shrugged. “Then I don’t. All I’m asking is for a little more time. We haven’t been able to find out much about this woman except that she was a newspaper reporter. We still don’t know why she was at that building on Saturday night or who she went to see.”
As John spoke, an image of Nikki Lockhart came to his mind. The little girl’s dark eyes and solemn face haunted him, and he couldn’t shake the notion that she might have seen something that night. Might know something she couldn’t tell him.
And what about the kid’s mother? What was she hiding? John didn’t like to admit it, but Thea Lockhart haunted him, too. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind all day yesterday after he’d left her, and all night last night when he’d tried to catch a few hours’ sleep.
It wasn’t so much that he was drawn to her, he told himself, but that he was intrigued by her. She was extraordinarily feminine with her soulful eyes and dark curly hair, but John had the distinct impression her appearance was deceiving. There was something about the way she carried herself, the fierce way she guarded her little girl that made him think she would be a formidable adversary if crossed.
“There’s something else you need to know,” John said hesitantly. “Something I didn’t put in the report.”
His uncle frowned. “What?”
John got up and closed the office door. The squad room was crowded and noisy as always, but he didn’t want to take the chance his conversation might be overheard. “Gail Waters called me a few days ago and wanted to interview me for a piece she was doing on Dad’s disappearance. She’d done her homework, Liam. She knew all about Ashley’s murder, the frat party, Tony and Miles. She’d even been up to the prison to talk to Daniel O’Roarke on death row.”
In less than a minute Liam Gallagher aged ten years. The vitality drained out of his still-muscular body, leaving him stooped, haggard and old. He slumped in his chair. “What did you tell her?”
John shrugged. “Nothing. I didn’t have time to talk to her, and I didn’t feel like dredging up all that old business. But…”
“But what?”
“Now she’s dead.”
A spark of life ignited in Liam’s eyes. “What are you trying to say, Johnny?” His tone was angry
“Nothing. It may be just a coincidence. But it’s a piece of the puzzle I don’t think we can overlook.”
“You told anybody about this? McIntyre?”
“No.”
“Not even Roy Cox?”
“You’re the first person I’ve mentioned this to.” But John didn’t like keeping things from his partner. He’d be madder than hell if Roy pulled something like this on him.
Liam stared at John for a long moment, then said softly, in a voice traced with an Irish accent, “You’re sure about this, Johnny?”
Sure about what? That Gail Waters had called him or that she’d been murdered? “The only thing I’m sure of is that she called me and now she’s dead.”
Liam sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “Okay. You did the right thing bringing this to me. I’ll handle it from here.”
John didn’t like the edge in his uncle’s voice. “What are you going to do?”
Liam shrugged. “Follow procedure. There’s nothing in these reports that warrant a follow-up investigation.”
“I disagree.”
“Let it go, Johnny.” There was a warning note in his uncle’s voice.
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
In a sudden burst of temper Liam picked up the file and flung it at John. The contents spilled over his desk. “That wasn’t a request, goddamn it, that was an order.” His blue eyes glittering with fire, he folded his arms on his desk and leaned toward John. “You’ve always been a good cop, Johnny, and one helluva detective, but sometimes you remind me too much of Sean. You don’t know when to let go. You gotta think about this one, son. You gotta think what it would do to the family if you started asking the wrong questions. Think about your brother. Ashley’s murder nearly did Tony in back then. Look what it’s done to his life. I’ve had to appear before more review boards on his behalf than I care to remember. The kid’s always been hanging on by a thread. What do you think would happen to him if he had to relive all that?”
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Amanda Stevens
Nothing distracted true blue police detective John Gallagher from his work–certainly not a woman. Until a mysterious death led him to Thea Lockhart's door. One look in Thea's beautiful, haunted eyes and John wanted to run–from visions of love, marriage and forever! But Thea's little girl might be the only witness to murder…Betrayed by the law that should have protected her, Thea had given up her identity to save her daughter. The last person she should trust was a policeman–but something in John's steady gaze made her hope. If she told him the truth about her past, did she dare believe this man could be her future?
“I’m worried about your safety…Thea.”
Her name on his lips sent a thrill of excitement rolling through Thea. A shiver of something she didn’t want to name eased up her backbone and made her stomach flutter in awareness. She hadn’t been attracted to a man in years. And now, at the worst possible time, with the worst possible man, Thea was feeling things she had no business feeling.
“Why can’t you just go away and leave us alone?” she whispered.
His gaze softened, touched her lips, and Thea trembled, clutching her daughter’s hand as if Nikki were her lifeline.
“There’re some things about this case you may not be aware of. Have dinner with me and we’ll talk about them.”
Thea’s heart started to pound. That she was even momentarily tempted by his invitation proved how dangerous he was to her.
She glanced down at Nikki. Nikki looked back up at her, her expression hopeful. The fact that Nikki showed a reaction at all was a positive sign. A small miracle.
With Nikki on his side, how on earth could Thea continue to do what she knew she must—resist John Gallagher?
Dear Intrigue Reader,
A brand-new year, the launch of a new millennium, a new cover look—and another exciting lineup of pulse-pounding romance and exhilarating suspense from Harlequin Intrigue!
This month, Amanda Stevens gives new meaning to the phrase “men in uniform” with her new trilogy, GALLAGHER JUSTICE, about a family of Chicago cops. They’re tough, tender and totally to die for. Detective John Gallagher draws first blood in The Littlest Witness (#549).
If you’ve never been Captured by a Sheikh (#550), you don’t know what you’re missing! Veteran romance novelist Jacqueline Diamond takes you on a magic carpet ride you’ll never forget, when a sheikh comes to claim his son, a baby he’s never even seen.
Wouldn’t you just love to wake up and have the sexiest man you’ve ever seen take you and your unborn child into his protection? Well, Harlequin Intrigue author Dani Sinclair does just that when she revisits FOOLS POINT. My Baby, My Love (#551) is the second story set in the Maryland town Dani created in her Harlequin Intrigue book For His Daughter (#539).
Susan Kearney rounds out the month with a trip to the wildest American frontier—Alaska. A Night Without End (#552) is another installment in the Harlequin Intrigue bestselling amnesia promotion A MEMORY AWAY…. This time a woman wakes to find herself in a remote land in the arms of a sexy stranger who claims to be her husband.
And this is just the beginning! We at Harlequin Intrigue are committed to keeping you on the edge of your seat. Thank you for your enthusiastic support.
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Associate Senior Editor, Harlequin Intrigue
The Littlest Witness
Amanda Stevens
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amanda Stevens has written over twenty novels of romantic suspense. Her books have appeared on several bestseller lists, and she has won Reviewer’s Choice and Career Achievement in Romantic/ Mystery awards from Romantic Times Magazine. She resides in Cypress, Texas, with her husband, her son and daughter, and their two cats.
Books by Amanda Stevens
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
373—STRANGER IN PARADISE
388—A BABY’S CRY
397—A MAN OF SECRETS
430—THE SECOND MRS. MALONE
453—THE HERO’S SON
458—THE BROTHER’S WIFE
462—THE LONG-LOST HEIR
489—SOMEBODY’S BABY
511—LOVER, STRANGER
549—THE LITTLEST WITNESS
HARLEQUIN BOOKS
2-in-1 Harlequin 50th Anniversary Collection
HER SECRET PAST
CAST OF CHARACTERS
John Gallagher—His only witness to murder is a little girl who can’t speak.
Thea Lockhart—She’s given up everything for her daughter. Has she finally found a man she can trust?
Nikki Lockhart—The four-year-old silent witness.
Gail Waters—Her death is as mysterious as the missing people she hunted down.
Morris Dalrimple—The building manager would like to know Thea much better.
Superintendent Ed Dawson—How well did he know Ms. Waters?
Annette Dawson—Ed’s bitter wife.
Eddie Dawson—Ed’s estranged son is nowhere to be found.
Liam Gallagher—John’s uncle is in a hurry to close the case. Why?
Miles Gallagher—A cop with a faulty memory.
Bliss Kyler—Where did Nikki’s baby-sitter take her to play?
Mrs. Lewellyn—Does Thea’s neighbor suspect her secrets?
Rick Mancuso—The man who haunts Thea’s worst nightmares.
This book is dedicated with much gratitude and
appreciation to my editor, Natashya Wilson.
Contents
Chapter One (#ucb10a46c-2151-577b-a835-60253a3e407a)
Chapter Two (#u635206d6-c680-521a-8474-4068966aa891)
Chapter Three (#uc375d93d-7036-5ecd-a5ba-5fe51b4fa97c)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Thea Lockhart hated being out so late. Every big city had its dangers, but Chicago after dark seemed particularly perilous, perhaps because she didn’t yet feel at home there. Or perhaps because the weather was so cruel, even for November. The days were gray and dismal, spilling over into frigid nights that seemed to go on forever. Thea sometimes wondered if she would ever be warm again.
But the bone-deep chill came from neither the city nor the temperature. She could have gone anywhere—a southern city, a small town, even out of the country—and the demons would have followed, pursuing her to the ends of the earth if necessary.
Thea’s fate—and her daughter’s—had been sealed four months ago, when she’d fled Baltimore in the middle of the night, leaving behind her identity, her friends and family, and her ex-husband, dead on her bedroom floor.
Because of what she’d done, she and Nikki would be on the run for the rest of their lives. The Mancuso family, along with the rest of the Baltimore Police Department, would never stop looking for them. Thea had violated the Brotherhood, the Blue Wall, and for that she would pay dearly—if she was caught.
Shivering in her long wool coat, she hurried down Woodlawn Avenue, away from the university. The lake was only a few blocks away, and the icy wind whistled through the alleys, in sync for an eerie moment with an ambulance siren that built to a crescendo, then faded.
It was after midnight and the empty streets spooked her. A shiver of warning feathered up her backbone, but when she glanced over her shoulder, there was no one behind her.
Through a break in the buildings, she glimpsed the smokestacks from the power plant. They rose like dark guardians in the night sky, but if anything, the sight deepened Thea’s chill. She felt alone and vulnerable. Exposed.
Normally she would have been home long before now, but three of the five waitresses scheduled for the evening shift at the diner had come down with the flu, and Thea’s boss had pressed her into working a double.
As much as she hated not being home in time to bathe her daughter and put her to bed—an evening ritual that had become important to both of them—Thea couldn’t refuse. Zelda Vanripper, owner of Zelda’s Eatery in Hyde Park, had been good to her, putting her on the day shift so that she could be home with Nikki at night and asking few questions about her background.
So Thea had stayed and worked, and the extra tips would come in handy, as always. But after being on her feet since seven that morning, she couldn’t wait to get home to a hot bath.
Her apartment building was only a few blocks from the diner, but the last two blocks dragged on her frazzled nerves and weary muscles. Huddling in her coat as a frigid gust tore at her, she hurried her steps, more anxious than ever to be out of the cold and the darkness.
As she crossed East Fifty-fifth Street, her apartment building finally came into view, but the sigh of relief died on her lips. Blue lights from half-a-dozen police cars bounced off the sides of buildings and reflected in long wavering beams down the wet street, capturing Thea in a frail azure glow.
She stood frozen for the longest moment, a two-word prayer rambling over and over in her mind. Oh God oh God oh God.
They’d found her!
Her first instinct was to turn and flee, to disappear into the shadows before anyone noticed her. But her daughter was in that building, and nothing, not even her own freedom, could compel her to run. She would never let them take Nikki back to Baltimore, back to the Mancusos, who would raise her in the same corruption in which they’d raised their own son.
Don’t think about that now, Thea ordered herself, burying her trembling hands in her pockets. Don’t think about Rick or the gunshot or all that blood.
Now was definitely not the time to panic.
Head down, shoulders hunched against the wind, she hurried along the sidewalk. When she drew near her building, she could see the area was cordoned off with yellow tape. Several policemen, uniforms and plainclothes, clustered around something in the street, almost directly in front of the building’s entrance.
Thea’s heart rocketed against her ribcage. Bile rose in her throat as she strained to see through the wall of policemen. Please, God, she prayed desperately. Let Nikki be all right.
If anything ever happened to her daughter, Thea wasn’t sure how she would cope. Nikki was her whole life, a sweet damaged angel who had been put through hell because of her parents. Thea would do anything, anything to protect her.
But what if she was too late? What if Rick’s family had somehow found them, and Nikki had tried to get away and…
Almost running now, Thea saw one of the officers step out of the way, and for the first time, she glimpsed the body lying on the pavement. Relief rushed through her when she saw it was a woman and not a child who lay motionless at the officers’ feet. But in the next instant Thea realized with guilty compassion that the victim was someone’s daughter. Her next of kin would be getting that terrible phone call, probably within the hour.
Lenore Mancuso’s grief-stricken face flashed across Thea’s mind, but she quickly shoved it aside. She wouldn’t think about Rick’s mother now, either.
Slowing, Thea hung back from the policemen, hoping they hadn’t seen her. The cold air frosted their breath as they talked and laughed and went about their grisly business with the same disconnection Thea had always found so chilling in Rick.
Teeth chattering from the cold and from nerves, she walked past them, her head still bowed. But as she approached the stoop, one of the officers called out, “Hey, you!”
She hesitated and looked over her shoulder.
“Yeah, you. Come over here.”
Her heart still pounding, Thea turned and slowly descended the steps. The officer met her at the bottom. He was one of the uniforms, middle-aged and heavyset, his face puffy and lined beneath the bill of his rain cap. His poncho billowed in the wind as he lifted his flash-light in her direction.
Automatically Thea turned her face away, but before he could switch on the beam, another car drove up and someone shouted, “Gallagher’s here.”
The man beside her muttered, “About damn time.”
Thea hoped the newcomer would distract the officer so that she could slip away, but he turned to stare down at her in the rain. “You live in this building?”
Thea hesitated, then nodded.
“Out kind of late, aren’t you?”
“I was just coming home from work.” She bit her lip, trying to control the chattering of her teeth. “Wh-what happened?”
“Someone took a dive off the roof,” the officer told her dispassionately. Then, “What’s your name?”
“Thea Lockhart.”
He carefully noted the information in his book. “Where do you work?”
“Zelda’s Eatery. It’s on East Fifty-seventh, near the university.”
Thea expected more questions, but the officer seemed to lose interest as the lights on the unmarked car that had just driven up were killed. They both watched as a man—Gallagher, she presumed—got out. He was tall and his shoulders beneath the heavy overcoat looked enormous. In spite of the cold and the rain, he wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves, and his coat flapped open in the wind, making him seem impervious to the brutal weather.
With grim deliberation, he surveyed the scene, his gaze raking the whole area—including Thea—before he walked toward the body. There was no mistaking who was in charge now. The crowd of officers parted for him, and Thea got a clearer view of the victim. She hadn’t expected so much blood. It reminded her of that night—
She staggered back a step and the policeman beside her caught her arm. “Hey, you okay?”
“I’m fine…”
But she wasn’t. Violence and death hit too close to home, and as ashamed as she was to admit it, her main concern was how to disentangle herself from the police. She couldn’t get involved. She felt sorry for the poor woman lying on the street, but she couldn’t afford to get caught up in a police investigation.
Trembling, she watched as Gallagher knelt and examined the body. He didn’t touch the victim, didn’t disturb the crime scene with so much as a stray glance, but for a long moment, he remained there, studying her face as if her last thoughts might be lingering somewhere on her frozen expression.
After several minutes he stood. “Who was the first officer?” His tone was deep, authoritative. Not cold exactly, but a voice belonging to a man Thea had no wish to confront.
“McGowan,” someone told him.
“Over here,” the man beside her called out.
Gallagher turned and started toward them. His features stood out starkly in the streetlight. Even the rain didn’t diminish the angles of his face, the broad nose, the full sensuous lips. His eyes were blue, which surprised Thea. She’d thought they would be dark, like his hair. The light color was particularly striking against his grave features.
He wore a suit beneath the overcoat, as if he’d taken the time to dress properly before coming out. But his cheeks were roughened with stubble, giving him a sinister appearance that made Thea’s stomach quiver in fear.
His gaze barely grazed her before he said to McGowan, “What happened?”
“Wait here,” McGowan told Thea. He and Gallagher took a few steps away from her, but the wind caught their voices and tossed them back at her. “Looks like a dry dive,” McGowan told him. “DCDS. Detective Cox found a suicide note in her coat pocket.”
“Any idea who she is?”
“Not yet. There’s no ID on her, but Cox has gone up to canvass the roof for a purse or wallet, anything she might have dropped before jumping.”
Almost inadvertently Thea’s gaze followed Gallagher’s to the roof of the building. She thought she could see someone up there now, and she shuddered as the shadow moved away from the edge.
“Who found the body?” Gallagher asked.
“The building manager. Claims he came outside just before midnight to walk his dog, and that’s when he saw the victim lying on the street. He checked for a pulse, didn’t find one and then went back inside to call 911.”
“Great,” Gallagher muttered. “Probably trampled all over anything resembling evidence.” He paused. “Just before midnight you say. How accurate do you figure he is on the time?”
“Fairly accurate,” McGowan told him. “He says he’d just finished watching an old episode of ‘Hill Street Blues,’ which comes on at eleven, but the closing credits hadn’t yet run. He lives with his elderly mother. He says she can corroborate his story.”
“How soon did you respond?”
“Torecelli and I were on the scene within ten minutes after we got the call from dispatch. We secured the area and radioed for backup.”
“The manager couldn’t identify her?”
McGowan shook his head. “Claims he never saw her before tonight. She’s not a tenant, and he doesn’t know how she got into the building, unless someone buzzed her in. The outside doors are always kept locked.”
That was true, Thea thought. But a policeman worth his salt knew how easy it was to obtain entrance to almost any unmonitored building. If someone wanted in badly enough, all he or she had to do was wait around until someone was either coming or going and slip through the unlocked door, usually unnoticed. Crooks did it all the time.
And so did murderers.
Thea shivered as she studied Detective Gallagher’s grim countenance. His gaze traced the angle of the building, studying the windows that faced the street. “What about eyewitnesses?”
“None so far. No defense wounds, either, that we could see. We bagged her hands in plastic because of the rain.” Thea knew that normally the police liked to use paper bags, because the lack of air with plastic could alter the evidence. But that was something she didn’t want them knowing she knew.
In fact, the less any of them knew about her the better, especially Gallagher. Thea had a bad feeling about him. A very bad feeling.
He turned and observed the street again, watching for a few minutes as the crime-scene unit finished taking pictures and then began scouring the ground around the body for trace evidence.
He glanced at Thea, then at McGowan. “Who’s she?”
“She lives in the building. Says she was just getting home from work.”
Gallagher nodded vaguely. “Might as well chalk the site when CSU finishes, although it won’t do much good if the rain doesn’t let up. I’m going up to the roof. Let me know when the coroner gets here. Establishing time of death is going to be a bitch in this weather.”
McGowan nodded and took off, leaving Thea standing alone to face Gallagher. She hoped he’d just go up to the roof and forget all about her, but when he turned and started toward her, she saw in his eyes that he had no intention of letting her get away so easily.
“I’m Detective Gallagher.” His gaze was direct, penetrating. If he noticed her trembling, Thea hoped he’d blame the cold. “And you are?”
“Thea Lockhart.”
“Officer McGowan said you live in the building, is that right?”
She nodded. “I was just coming home from work when he stopped me.”
“You work around here, Miss Lockhart?”
“It’s…Mrs. I’m a waitress at a diner near the university. I already gave this information to Officer McGowan.”
The detective’s piercing gaze met hers. “You weren’t home tonight?”
Thea shook her head, shoving her hands even deeper into her pockets. “I’ve been away since before seven o’clock this morning. I didn’t see anything.”
“No strangers lurking around the building lately? No loud arguments, anything like that?”
“No, nothing unusual.”
Gallagher nodded almost absently. “I wonder if you’d mind taking a look at the body. See if you can identify the victim.”
The request was courteous enough, allowing her to decline if she wanted to, but Thea knew she had no real choice. No matter how much she didn’t want to look at that poor dead woman, she mustn’t do or say anything that might make Detective Gallagher suspicious.
She nodded and followed him over to the victim. The woman was lying on her back, her face surprisingly unscathed from what must have been a horrendous fall. But as Thea looked more closely, she saw the cuts and the terrible bruising that gave the body an almost ghoulish appearance. Her arms and legs were at strange angles, too, the bones undoubtedly shattered.
“I’ve never seen her before.” But Thea had second thoughts almost at once. There was something vaguely familiar about the woman, but she couldn’t place her. Which was good. At least she didn’t have to tell an outright lie.
As if sensing her hesitation, Gallagher pressed, “You’re sure?”
She could feel his gaze on her and she tried to suppress a shudder. “I don’t remember seeing her around here before.” Thea paused, then couldn’t resist asking, “Do you really think she committed suicide?” Jumping from a building seemed like such a ghastly way to die, but then, so was a bullet to the heart. A sick feeling rose in Thea’s throat, but she swallowed it away as she glanced up at Detective Gallagher.
His gaze narrowed on her, and she thought for one heart-stopping moment he might have recognized her. Then he said, “Suicide’s a possibility. We’ll know more when we’ve done a thorough search of the area. Right now you’d better get in out of this rain. We’ll be in touch if we need you.”
Alarmed, Thea started to ask why he would need to contact her again, but then realized he and the other officers would begin almost immediately the grueling work of talking to everyone in the building, searching for potential witnesses. Goyakod, Rick had always called it. Get off your ass and knock on doors. He would have been a good cop if he hadn’t been dirty.
But Thea wouldn’t think about that now. She’d become an expert at compartmentalizing her emotions, and right now all she would allow herself to concentrate on was getting away from Detective Gallagher without arousing his suspicions. She was desperate to go inside and check on Nikki.
She took the card he handed her, trying to control the trembling in her hands. But he noticed and said softly, “It’s rough when you’re not used to it.”
If you only knew, Thea thought, but aloud she said, “I’m okay. I just need to be inside, out of the cold.”
He nodded. “If you think of anything that might help, call me at that number.”
Thea stuffed his card deep into the pocket of her coat, knowing all the while that Detective Gallagher would never get a call from her, no matter what. He was a cop, and that was all she needed to know about him. His badge made him one of the enemy.
SHE SEEMED AWFULLY NERVOUS for a bystander, John thought as he watched her at the front door of the building.
She dropped her keys on the stoop, and even from his position several yards away, he could see how badly her hands shook as she bent and picked them up. She started to insert her key into the lock, but then, realizing the door was already unlocked, she hurried inside. A pale blue scarf hid her hair while the oversize coat she wore wrapped her from neck to toe.
But even bundled up like that, John could tell she was a small woman. Petite, he supposed, would be the word. Her thin face was pale and translucent, her features—dark brown eyes, slightly crooked nose, full lips—almost fragile-looking.
There was something about her, apart from her obvious attractiveness, that intrigued him. She had the demeanor of a woman who had been badly frightened and was trying her damnedest to hide it. But if she didn’t recognize the victim, what did she have to be scared of?
His inherent distrust was working overtime tonight, he decided, scowling. A lot of people were nervous around the police. Maybe the real reason Thea Lockhart triggered his distrust was that she reminded him a little of his ex-wife.
Meredith hadn’t cared for cops, either. At least that was what she’d said the night she walked out. But then two months later, she’d married another one, leaving John to conclude that it was one cop in particular she hadn’t cared for. Even though they’d been divorced for nearly two years, her betrayal still rankled.
But Meredith Clark was no longer his concern, and Thea Lockhart was probably just the nervous type, someone who fell apart at the sight of blood. The only woman John had to worry about now was the Jane Doe lying mangled on the concrete.
“Where’s the building manager?” he asked the officer nearest him. “We’ll need to start knocking on doors ASAP.”
“He’s on the roof with Detective Cox,” the uniform told him. “Want me to radio up?”
“I’m headed that way.” John took another look at the victim. Had she jumped off the building of her own free will or had she been pushed? In spite of the note found in her pocket, John voted for the latter. His every instinct told him this was a homicide, and if his hunch panned out, the next forty-eight hours would be critical. After that, the trail would start getting cold. If a case wasn’t solved in the first two days, odds were good it would never be cleared. John knew that better than anyone.
“Hell of a night for a murder,” he muttered as the rain started coming down harder.
Chapter Two
The rain peppered John’s face as he stood on the roof, his presence as yet unnoticed. The wind was stronger up here, and he braced himself as he watched Cox’s flashlight beam moving about the area.
The roof was surrounded by a concrete safety ledge, about three feet high and six inches wide. Near the stairwell door and to the left, pallets of building materials and twenty-gallon drums had been stacked in preparation for resurfacing and waterproofing the deck, but the rest of the roof was clear and open. But even so, at this time of night and in this weather, the prospect of an eyewitness was pretty dim.
John’s gaze tracked his partner’s progression across the roof. Roy Cox was a fifteen-year veteran of the Detective Division. He and John had been working together for nearly four years now, and although they couldn’t have been less alike in temperament and investigative techniques, the partnership had worked out well. Whereas John was intense, almost obsessive about their cases, Roy was laid-back and soft-spoken, his west-Texas drawl as pronounced as it had been the day he’d left El Paso nearly thirty years ago.
He was a tall man, wiry and grizzled, with a handlebar mustache that might have looked more at home on a Texas range than it did on the streets of Chicago. A second man, the building manager, John guessed, dogged Cox’s steps, his gravelly voice muted by the rain and wind. John switched on his flashlight, catching the man in his beam. Wide-eyed and startled, he looked like a deer trapped in headlights.
Cox called out, “Hey, that you, Johnny boy? Glad you could finally make it. I reckon even you gung ho-types have trouble tearing yourselves away from a warm body on a night like this.”
John refrained from telling him that the only female in his bed lately was Cassandra, the temperamental Persian Meredith had left behind when she’d moved out. But Cox was his partner, and a nosy one at that; John suspected he already knew. “McGowan said you found a suicide note on the victim.”
“Damn straight we did.” Cox walked over and handed the bagged note to John. The words had been typed on a sheet of plain white bond paper.
“Short and sweet,” John muttered, training his light on the note.
“Just the way I like my women.” Cox grinned, his face pale in the cast-off glow from his flashlight. Water dripped from the brim of Cox’s cowboy hat, the battered one he always wore in inclement weather. “Looks like this is our lucky night, Johnny.”
“What do you mean?”
Cox held up a second plastic bag and aimed his flashlight beam on the contents—an expensive-looking beige handbag. “Found it on the deck over there by the wall. Victim must have dropped it just before she jumped. We’ve ID’d her from her driver’s license.”
“Who is she?”
“Name’s Gail Waters. She had a press pass…”
The name hit John like a physical blow. Stunned, he stared at his partner as a shock wave rolled through him. “Who did you say?”
Cox gave him a quizzical glance. “Gail Waters.”
Son of a bitch, John thought, trying to hide his surprise.
Cox rubbed the salt-and-pepper whiskers on his chin. “I’m getting some bad vibes here, Johnny-O. Are you trying to tell me you knew the victim?”
“I never saw her before in my life,” John answered truthfully. But he knew the sound of her voice. He’d talked to her on the phone less than forty-eight hours earlier, when she’d called the station wanting to interview him about his father’s disappearance seven years ago. It was a case that had not been solved to this day.
Gail Waters had been a reporter for and the managing editor of a small newspaper on the near north side of town. She specialized in stories involving disappearances and missing persons. Although she was a print journalist—and had taken pride in pointing out that fact to John—she had also been the co-producer of a cable show called Vanished!, which explored intriguing cases the police hadn’t been able to solve.
Why she’d suddenly decided to investigate Sean Gallagher’s disappearance, John had no idea. But her death had to be a coincidence. It couldn’t have anything to do with his father.
But even so, names from John’s past flashed like a strobe through his head: Ashley Dallas, the young woman whose murder Sean had been investigating at the time of his disappearance; Daniel O’Roarke, the man convicted of Ashley’s brutal murder, who now sat on death row; and John’s own brother Tony, who had been in love with Ashley at the time of her murder.
For some reason Gail Waters had wanted to dig up that old tragedy, expose secrets that had been buried for more than seven years.
And now she was dead.
A coincidence, John told himself again. But a cold finger of dread traced up his backbone as he stood in the icy rain.
“You want to notify the old man or should I?” Cox was asking.
The “old man” Cox was referring to was John’s uncle and their commanding officer. Liam Gallagher kept himself apprised of every investigation the detectives conducted under his watch. His knowledge of all the uncleared cases in his jurisdiction was nothing short of phenomenal, and John had always held his uncle in the highest esteem.
But now a tiny doubt began to niggle at him. Liam had worked on the Ashley Dallas case, too. Had Gail Waters talked to him about John’s father’s strange disappearance?
“Let’s hold off on that.” John stared at the note for a moment longer, then handed it back to Cox. “A type-written suicide note always worries me. I’d like to do a little more digging before we call in.”
Cox groaned. “I don’t like the sound of that. You’re going to get a hard-on about this one, aren’t you? You’ve got that look.”
“I’m going to do my job,” John said grimly. “And so are you. Until we get the coroner’s report, we’re going to treat this as a homicide investigation.”
Cox muttered an oath as his radio crackled. He pulled it from his belt and walked a few feet away to respond. John used the opportunity to examine the wall and floor of the roof at the spot from where he judged the victim had fallen. Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, he knelt and scoured the area with his flashlight, knowing all the while the rain had probably washed away whatever trace evidence, including fingerprints, that might have been left.
“Meat wagon’s here,” Cox called from the stairwell door. “You coming?”
“I’ll be there in a minute.” John stood and gazed over the side of the building. Down on the street, a handful of bystanders had gathered at the fringes of the yellow tape.
As if sensing John’s gaze, one of them, a man wearing a black parka, a stocking cap and a muffler covering the lower part of his face, glanced up at the roof. Even five stories away, John felt a tug of recognition.
He knew the man only as Fischer, an informant he’d used successfully in the past. John had no idea about the man’s real identity, but he seemed to have an uncanny knack for showing up at crime scenes, particularly the ones John was called out on. He suspected Fischer not only had a police scanner, but an inside line into the department. Whatever his connection, his information had proved invaluable in the past.
As John watched, Fischer turned and headed down the street, his shoulders hunched against the sharp blast of wind from the lake.
John rubbed the back of his neck where the hair had suddenly stood on end. Fischer always gave him a case of the jitters, although he couldn’t say why exactly. Maybe because there were elements of danger and distrust involved with all informants.
The door to the stairwell slammed shut in the wind and Cox disappeared. John saw that the building manager remained and had started across the roof toward him.
He was a short squat man, somewhere in his forties, who breathed in sharp, almost gasping puffs of air. In the dim light he looked eager and excited, his small dark eyes greedily taking in every last detail of the search.
“Detective, if I may be so bold…” Rain glistened in the fringe of brown hair that circled the man’s bald pate like a dingy halo.
“What is it?” John asked, annoyed at having his concentration broken.
“It’s something I, er, mentioned to Detective Cox, but he, er, didn’t seem to take much notice.” The man stuttered and stumbled over his words, as if extremely nervous. He wiped moisture from his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s over there.” He pointed to the stack of building materials near the stairwell door.
“What is?”
“I’m, er, not sure. Evidence maybe.”
John said sharply, “What are you talking about, Mr.—”
“Dalrimple. Morris Dalrimple. My friends call me Dal.”
“Why don’t you show me what you’re talking about, Mr. Dalrimple?”
The building manager touched his fingertips to his chin, then dropped his hand to his side. “I think I saw something. If you would, er, just shine your flashlight over there…a little more to your right…yes, that’s it. Right there. And then if you would, er, kneel, like you did earlier…”
John complied, although there was something about Dalrimple that was a little unsettling. To be honest, the man gave him the creeps.
John focused his light on the stacks of building materials. From where he knelt he could make out narrow channels running through the crowded pallets of drums. He didn’t see anything at first, but then he moved the beam back, playing it along one of the channels.
“Yes, there it is!” Dalrimple cried excitedly. He almost jumped up and down with glee. “I thought I saw something in there earlier, although Detective Cox couldn’t spot it. But if I may be so bold…tall people, er, tend to overlook a lot of things. You don’t concern yourself with places that accommodate only little people—like myself, for instance. I thought right off the space between the pallets might be a good place for someone to, er, hide, but Detective Cox was certain no one could fit in there. I must admit, since I, er, put on a little weight, it might be a bit of a squeeze—”
Dalrimple broke off in midsentence as John stood and strode to the pallets. He bent and angled his light into the long channel between the stacks of drums. Something was lying on the floor several feet inside. Lifeless eyes gleamed in the crisp beam from John’s flashlight.
John knelt and felt inside the channel. Using the flashlight as an extension, he dragged whatever was on the floor toward him, until he could reach it with his hand. His fingers closed around a scrap of fabric, and a tinny voice intoned, “Ma-ma” as he pulled a doll from its hiding place.
“Well, I’ll be!” Dalrimple exclaimed, gazing down at the toy in John’s hand. “How do you suppose that got in there?” He started to touch the doll’s mop of dark hair, but John jerked it away. Dalrimple looked crushed.
“There could be prints,” John felt obliged to explain. “You understand.”
“Oh, of course. I know all about, er, police procedure. Mama and I never miss an episode of ‘Cops.’ So what do you think about the doll, Detective? Is it evidence?”
“Possibly.” Walking back across the roof, he stood at the edge where Gail Waters had gone over and fixed his light on the stack of pallets. The channel between was tight, but as Dalrimple had suggested, a small adult could manage to squeeze inside. A child could do so quite easily. And if she had been hiding in the space earlier, she could have seen what happened without being detected.
It was possible he might have himself a witness, after all. And if Gail had been murdered, it was imperative that he find the owner of the doll as quickly as possible.
He turned to Dalrimple. “I’m going to need your help…Dal. This is very important.”
The little man almost glowed. “Well, er, of course. Whatever I can do to be of, er, assistance.”
“I’ll need a list of all the tenants in the building, and I’ll need you to flag the ones who have children. We’ll start with the families who have little girls under the age of, say, ten.”
Dalrimple’s brow furrowed. “That could, er, take a while. I’m not so good on the computer, and Mama doesn’t like to be disturbed once she’s gone to bed.”
John grasped the man’s arm. “The problem is, I don’t have a while. I need it now. Five minutes ago. You can help me out, can’t you, Dal?”
The man seemed torn for a minute, some internal conflict—no doubt involving his mother—causing myriad expressions to flash across his face. Then he nodded, resolved. “You can count on me, Detective. I’ll do whatever I can to assist you.”
“Good,” John said. “I’ll be sure to note your cooperation in my report.”
Dalrimple said solemnly, “Mama will be so pleased.”
ZELDA’S EATERY was closed on Sundays, and normally Thea loved to sleep in. She’d never been an early riser on weekends, but in spite of her late hours the night before, she was up by seven, tiptoeing around the apartment so that she wouldn’t awaken Nikki.
Mrs. Lewellyn was gone, having gotten up sometime after Thea went to bed and let herself out of the apartment. She’d been sleeping on the couch when Thea got home, and Thea hadn’t had the heart to disturb her. She made a mental note to call the older woman later and thank her for coming over the evening before on such short notice. Nikki’s regular baby-sitter had already made plans when Thea had called from the diner about working a double shift, but Mrs. Lewellyn had been more than willing to step in.
Back in Baltimore, Thea had never had to worry about child care. Nikki had been enrolled in a wonderful preschool, and when Thea was kept late at work, her stepmother, Mona, who was employed in the same office, was usually available to pick up Nikki. And on the rare occasions when Mona couldn’t do it, Kate Ramano, Thea’s best friend since high school, had readily stepped in.
Thea wondered what Kate and Mona thought of her now. She’d left Baltimore without a phone call to either of them. They had no idea where she and Nikki were, or the real story behind Rick’s death, although Thea knew they’d both have their suspicions. They knew what her life had been like after the divorce—the midnight phone calls, the threats, the stalking.
Rick had made her life a living hell, and both Mona and Kate had been wonderful friends through it all. But they were human. They’d have to wonder, at times, if Rick’s shooting had been self-defense or premeditated. Hadn’t they heard her say, more than once, how much she wanted him dead?
Shivering, Thea poured herself a cup of coffee, then clicked on the TV, leaving the volume on mute as she surfed through the cable stations, trying to find a local news broadcast. She’d seen no sign of reporters on the scene last night, thank goodness, but she could never be too careful. The last thing she needed was to have her face splashed across newspapers. What if the Mancusos saw her picture?
For a while last night, she’d worried that Detective Gallagher might have recognized her from a wanted poster or police blotter or even a newspaper. Rick’s murder, along with the disappearance of his ex-wife and daughter, was bound to have made front page in Baltimore. She couldn’t be certain the story hadn’t been picked up by one of the wire services and carried nationally, as well, even though she’d seen no mention of it in the past four months.
When she and Nikki had first arrived in Chicago, she’d scoured the papers and listened to news broadcasts daily, but the Windy City had its own headlines, its own problems with domestic violence.
And by the time Thea had had the nerve to venture out of their motel room and look for a newsstand carrying the Baltimore Sun, the whole grisly affair had been knocked from the pages by a bribery scandal involving high-ranking city officials. There’d been no mention of Rick’s murder, no mention of the police corruption Thea had suspected for months.
She’d been left to imagine what the headlines must have been: VINDICTIVE EX-WIFE MURDERS DECORATED POLICE OFFICER. COP KILLER FLEES BALTIMORE WITH FOUR-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER. STATEWIDE MANHUNT FOR COLD-BLOODED MURDERER.
Thea sometimes still had a hard time believing how much her life had changed. She’d been a business major in college and had gone to work at her father’s private-investigation firm right after graduation. She hadn’t been interested in field work, but she had been interested in numbers. She’d run the office efficiently, cutting costs and increasing profits with her innovative ideas. Now she worked as a waitress in a diner. She’d once been a respected member of the chamber of commerce. Now she was a wanted criminal.
Deep in thought, she started violently when the doorbell sounded. Her heart skidded against her chest as her head swiveled toward the door. Who in the world would be coming to see her at this hour on a Sunday morning?
Telling herself it was probably Mrs. Lewellyn wanting to chat for a few minutes, Thea hurried to the door. But when she glanced through the peephole, she gasped in dismay.
Detective Gallagher stood in the hallway, his blue eyes so piercing she could have sworn he had the ability to look directly through the door, straight at her.
Frantically she glanced around. Was there anything incriminating in the apartment? Should she hide? Pretend she wasn’t home? Grab Nikki and make a run for it?
Smoothing her hands down the sides of her chenille robe, Thea tried to get her nerves under control. There was no reason to panic. Detective Gallagher was conducting a police investigation that she had inadvertently become a part of. All she had to do was convince him that she had seen nothing last night. She had no connection to the dead woman.
But suddenly the woman’s picture flashed on the TV screen, and for a moment, the smiling attractive face triggered something in Thea. Not recognition exactly, but a feeling that at sometime, somewhere, she and the dead woman’s paths had crossed.
The doorbell sounded again, and casting a glance toward Nikki’s bedroom, Thea patted down her tangled dark hair and pulled open the door.
Detective John Gallagher was even taller than she remembered, and more formal looking than she would have expected for a Sunday morning, unless of course, he was on his way to church. But somehow Thea doubted that. He had the appearance of a man who lived and breathed his investigations. Police work would be his religion. She knew the type all too well.
He was dressed in a dark gray suit, a starched white shirt and a silk tie that were obviously expensive—and made Thea immediately suspicious. She knew what cops made, what they had to do to afford clothing like his. A shudder of warning rippled through her.
“Good morning.” His tone was cordial, but he didn’t smile. His expression remained impersonal, his eyes very blue and very cold.
In spite of his grim demeanor, he was a strikingly handsome man, Thea realized. The kind of man who almost always spelled trouble.
He gazed past her shoulder into the apartment. “May I come in? I have a few questions I need to ask you.”
Dear God, what kind of questions? What in the world was he doing here? Thea frowned. “But I told you last night—I didn’t see anything. I wasn’t even home.”
One dark brow lifted slightly. “But your little girl was, right?”
His words were like a dagger through Thea’s chest. Her heart seemed to stop for a long painful moment, and she could almost feel the color draining from her face. “How did you—”
“May I come in? This won’t take long.”
He didn’t wait for her acquiescence this time, but strode by her into the apartment, turning to face her when she remained motionless at the open doorway. Left with no option, Thea closed the door and followed him.
“Sorry to interrupt your coffee.” He nodded toward the steaming mug on the cocktail table. “Smells good.”
Thea merely looked at him. She had no intention of offering him coffee or anything else. This wasn’t a social call, and the sooner she got rid of him, the better.
How in God’s name had he known about Nikki? The Mancusos had far-reaching contacts, but still…
Thea laced her fingers together, trying to stop the trembling. She couldn’t let him see how nervous she was. Couldn’t give herself away. For Nikki’s sake, she had to perform as she had never performed before.
“How did you know about my daughter?” She got to finish the question this time, amazed that her tone came out just right—part curiosity, part irritation at having her peaceful morning interrupted.
“We obtained a list of all the tenants in the building with children. Little girls, to be exact.”
“But why?” For the first time, Thea noticed the brown paper bag he carried in one hand. Fear crept up her backbone. She lifted her gaze to meet his. “Detective Gallagher, what’s this about?”
In answer, he turned toward the television. “I see you’ve been watching the news this morning. You probably already know that the woman who died here last night was Gail Waters. She was a reporter for a small newspaper called the Press.”
“A reporter?” What had a reporter been doing in this building? Who had she come to see? Had she somehow found out about her and Nikki?
“The paper is local, but some of her investigative pieces also ran on a cable news channel.”
Gail Waters had been on television? Was that why she’d looked familiar? Thea desperately wanted to believe that was the case. There was no reason to assume a reporter’s presence in this building had anything to do with her and Nikki. And yet…
Detective Gallagher was here in her apartment, asking questions about her daughter. Obviously he thought there was a connection.
Thea lifted her chin. “As I told you last night, I don’t recall having seen her before. I don’t understand why you’re here, Detective Gallagher.”
His gaze, intent and probing, fell on her once more. “As you can imagine, there’re still a lot of unanswered questions concerning her death.”
“But I thought her death was a suicide. The officer I spoke with last night said a note had been found on the body.”
“And as I said last night, suicide’s a possibility, but we’re not ruling out homicide. Not yet, at least.”
“Homicide? You think someone murdered her?” Thea felt momentarily faint. “Who would want to kill her?” she asked weakly.
He gave her a curious look. “Reporters are a lot like cops. People sometimes don’t like the questions we ask.”
Thea didn’t say anything to that, but she remembered the list of people Rick had claimed wanted him dead. And yet the last person he’d suspected was the one who finally did him in. Thea’s stomach churned in warning. “Whether it was suicide or murder, I don’t see what her death has to do with my daughter or me.”
“I’m coming to that.” He took something from the bag and held it up for her inspection. “Do you recognize this?”
Thea’s knees almost buckled when she saw the doll. The black curls, the brown eyes, the dimpled cheeks were very much like her daughter’s, which was exactly why she’d bought the doll for Nikki. It had been an extravagance they could ill afford these days, but her daughter had been so enchanted with the resemblance when they’d seen her in a shop window. Thea hadn’t been able to resist. Until then, Nikki had been largely unresponsive to just about everything. The doll, named Piper after a character in Nikki’s favorite book, had struck a chord deep inside the child that no one, including Thea, had been able to touch since that terrible night four months ago.
Nikki loved that doll. She would never have willingly parted with it. So how had Detective Gallagher come to be in possession of it? And what did the doll have to do with Gail Waters’s death?
Chilled, Thea stared at the doll in Gallagher’s hand, forcing her expression to remain placid. It was imperative that he not connect the doll to Nikki. It was crucial that the two of them remain untouched by his investigation. “You came here at this hour of the morning to ask me about a doll?” She let a trace of irritation creep into her voice.
“Do you recognize it?”
Almost absently Thea rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Detective Gallagher watched her intently, studying her as if she were a bug under his microscope. But Thea had learned a lot about bluffing from her father and from the other investigators who had worked for him. “That doll could belong to any little girl in this building. I can’t imagine why you think it’s my daughter’s.”
His eyes narrowed on her. He didn’t appear fooled by her evasions. “I found this doll on the roof last night after a woman had fallen to her death. Does it, or does it not, belong to your daughter?”
On the roof! My God…
A fresh wave of fear washed over Thea, but she shook her head, denying her thoughts. This was crazy. Nikki would never have gone up to the roof. She wasn’t even allowed out of the apartment without Thea’s permission, and besides that, her daughter was terrified of the dark. There was no way on earth she would have gone up to that roof alone last night, and Thea couldn’t imagine that Mrs. Lewellyn would have taken her.
So how had the doll gotten up there?
“You look surprised, Mrs. Lockhart. Why is that, if the doll doesn’t belong to your daughter?”
Cornered, Thea chewed her lip. “The doll is a common one. I’ve seen it in several stores. Nikki does have one similar to it, but that doesn’t mean this one is hers. It couldn’t be, because there is no way she would have been on that roof. She’s only four years old.”
“The stairs go all the way to the roof,” Detective Gallagher pointed out. “Even a four-year-old can climb stairs, and you said yourself, you were out all evening. How can you be sure your daughter wasn’t on that roof?”
“Because her baby-sitter would never have allowed it.” But a vision of Mrs. Lewellyn snoring peacefully on the sofa flashed through Thea’s mind. Was it possible Nikki had left the apartment while the elderly woman slept? But why would Nikki do something like that? It was totally out of character for her. There was no good reason Thea could think of that would have compelled her daughter out of the apartment and up to the roof.
Either the doll wasn’t hers or she’d lost it somewhere, in the hallway perhaps between here and Mrs. Lewellyn’s apartment, and someone had picked it up. Someone else had taken it to the roof. That was the only possible explanation.
If only she hadn’t had to work late last night. Then she would have been home with Nikki herself, and Detective Gallagher wouldn’t be here asking all these questions, and she wouldn’t be assailed by all these doubts. This awful premonition that somehow she and Nikki both were tied to the dead woman.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” she insisted.
Detective Gallagher stared at her for a moment longer, then shrugged. “Sorry I wasted your time.” He started for the door, but before Thea could breathe a sigh of relief, he turned back to face her. “Maybe we should ask your daughter about last night. Just to be on the safe side.”
“She’s sleeping, and I really don’t want to wake her. She…hasn’t been feeling well lately.”
“I see.” His eyes were dark and fathomless as his gaze rested on Thea. He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but a sound from behind her drew his attention, and Thea knew without turning that her daughter was standing in the doorway. She also knew that once Nikki saw the doll in Detective Gallagher’s hand the pretense would be over.
But Piper had disappeared behind the detective’s back, out of Nikki’s sight. Thea thought for a moment he was actually going to leave without questioning her daughter, but then in the next instant, she told herself she should have known better. He was a cop, wasn’t he? No one was sacred. Not even a wounded four-year-old girl.
“You must be Nikki.” His tone lowered, became almost gentle. He walked past Thea before she could protest and knelt in front of her daughter. “Your mother and I were just talking about you. I’m Detective Gallagher.”
Nikki was still dressed in her pajamas, looking soft and sweetly rumpled, her cloud of dark hair hanging in tangles down her back. She stared at Detective Gallagher, her brown eyes wide with fright.
Thea moved quickly to Nikki’s side and knelt beside her, smoothing back her hair. “It’s okay, sweetie. He’s not going to hurt you.”
She gave Gallagher a warning glance, and he smiled reassuringly at Nikki. A rather devastating smile, Thea thought fleetingly.
“Why don’t you call me John? That’s what my friends call me. Some of them even call me Johnny.”
How ludicrous. The man looked nothing like a Johnny.
Nikki’s gaze silently probed his features, searching for signs of violence. Rick had taught their daughter well, too. Thea’s heart twisted, watching her.
Still kneeling in front of Nikki, John said, “I wonder if you could help me out, Nikki. I found a pretty little doll on the roof last night. Come to think of it, she looks a lot like you. I rescued her before she got rained on, and now I’m trying to find out who she belongs to.” He brought the doll around and laid her across his knee.
Nikki made a guttural sound deep in her throat and snatched Piper from his knee, clutching her tightly to her chest as she backed into the tiny hallway.
“I take it she belongs to you,” John said softly. He glanced at Thea, his gaze cold and accusing. “What was your doll doing on the roof, Nikki? Did you leave her there?”
Nikki looked near tears. Her eyes were like two huge O’s. She continued to back away from Detective Gallagher, until she was trapped against the wall. Then she slid down to sit on the floor, curling into a soft protective ball around Piper.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” John said, making no move toward the little girl. “I just need to ask you a few questions.”
Shaken by her daughter’s reaction, Thea pushed past the detective and gathered Nikki into her arms. Nikki whimpered, burying her face in Thea’s shoulder as she clutched Piper tightly. “She can’t answer your questions, Detective,” Thea said coldly. “Why don’t you just go away and leave us alone?”
He rose slowly. “I didn’t come here to frighten your little girl. I’m sorry she’s scared. But this is a police investigation. A woman is dead, and it’s my job to find out what happened to her. If your daughter knows something—”
“She doesn’t know anything. Please, she can’t help you.” Thea’s arms tightened protectively around Nikki as she gazed up at Detective Gallagher, trying to appeal to the softness she’d glimpsed in him earlier, fervently hoping the compassion had been genuine. “I don’t know how her doll got on that roof, but I do know Nikki wasn’t up there last night. She couldn’t have been. She didn’t see anything.”
“Why won’t you let her tell me that?”
Thea drew a long trembling breath and said, almost in a whisper, “Because she can’t. She can’t tell you anything. My daughter can’t speak, Detective.”
JOHN STOOD at the window in Thea Lockhart’s living room while he waited for her to come out of her daughter’s bedroom. She’d reluctantly told him to help himself to the coffee, and he’d complied, the aroma too tempting to pass up this early in the morning. The rich steamy brew was a far cry from the lukewarm sludge at the station, and he savored the taste as he stared out the window.
The building across the street blocked the view of the lake, forcing his gaze downward. The yellow crime-scene tape had torn loose in the wind, and sometime during the night the rain had changed to snow; now a light layer of it hid the bloodstains. Passersby on the street barely gave the spot a second glance. They didn’t know or didn’t care that a woman had died there last night, had sucked in her last breath while plunging five stories to the ground. Had the name of her killer been on her lips when she died?
Scowling, John turned away from the window. He couldn’t shake the nagging suspicion that Thea Lockhart and her daughter knew more about Gail Waters’s death than they were telling. Why else was Mrs. Lockhart so nervous around him?
Mrs. Lockhart. John glanced around the apartment, taking in the shabby furniture, the basket of laundry shoved in one corner, the coloring book and crayons scattered over the dining-room table. Gold hoop earrings had been dropped into a glass bowl on the cocktail table, and a pair of white walking shoes rested near the front door.
There wasn’t a trace of masculinity anywhere, including the laundry. A pink uniform lay folded on top of the basket, while the leg of a child’s pajama bottom hung over one side and a lacy white bra spilled over the other.
He stared at the bra for a moment as something familiar, and unwanted, stirred in him. Meredith had been gone for some time. He was over her, and he’d long since come to terms with his failed marriage. But a woman’s underthings were a reminder of the intimacy and closeness he’d once had, and he couldn’t deny a certain hollowness in his life now. A loneliness he didn’t often admit to.
He glanced up and caught Thea Lockhart watching him from the hallway. She knew what he’d been staring at, and a faint blush tinged her cheeks. She lifted her chin as she came into the room.
She’d changed from the chenille robe into a pair of worn jeans and navy blue sweater. Her short dark hair was combed behind her ears, but a riot of curls spilled across her forehead. She shoved it back impatiently.
“How’s your daughter?” John asked, his gaze inadvertently traveling over her. She was very thin, her skin smooth and soft-looking, but she had a toughness about her, a wariness in her dark eyes that made him think she was no innocent. She’d been around. Somehow he liked that about her.
“She’s playing with her doll for now, but she’ll want breakfast in a few minutes.”
John took the hint. He’d need to leave before then. “Why did you lie to me about the doll, Mrs. Lockhart?”
She looked surprised for a moment, as if his question had been unexpected. Then she shrugged. “I didn’t lie. I wasn’t sure it was Nikki’s. And I still can’t imagine how it got on the roof last night.”
He lifted a brow as he watched her move to the tiny kitchen and pour herself another cup of coffee. She held up the pot. “Can I freshen yours?”
He shook his head. “No, thanks, I’m fine. This is good, by the way.” He toasted her with his mug, and she inclined her head slightly. She didn’t move back into the living room, but remained in the kitchen with the bar between them.
John left his post by the window and crossed to her. She looked vaguely startled again as he looked down at her, and she averted her gaze as she sipped her coffee.
“You still don’t think your daughter left the doll on the roof?”
She frowned. “Of course I don’t. You saw how shy she is, how…easily frightened. There’s no way she would have gone up to that roof alone, and I know Mrs. Lewellyn would never have taken her up there.”
“Maybe that’s something we need to ask Mrs. Lewellyn.”
“I intend to,” Thea snapped. Then, as if having second thoughts about her angry tone, she set down her coffee and gazed at him in earnest. “Look, even if Nikki was up there—which I know she wasn’t—what is it you think she can do for you? She can’t tell you anything, Detective.”
John put down his own cup and leaned his arms on the bar, trying to appear relaxed and unthreatening. “Has she always been like this?”
For a moment he thought she wouldn’t answer. That same fierce protectiveness he’d witnessed earlier came over her features, and she frowned. “No. Just since her father died.”
“I see.” A widow. That might explain a lot, John thought, and not just the lack of male paraphernalia in the apartment. It might also explain the glimmer of desperation he’d seen in Thea Lockhart’s dark eyes, and the fear. And the fact that she seemed to have a hard time looking him in the eye, acknowledging the unmistakable physical attraction that clung to their glances, their voices, the air around them. She might feel guilty about that, he decided, although there was no reason to. He didn’t intend to act on his impulses and he was certain she didn’t, either.
“How did her father die?” he asked carefully.
“An accident. A…tragic accident. Nikki hasn’t gotten over it yet, and I…don’t like to talk about it.”
“I understand. But if there’s even a slim chance that Nikki was on the roof last night, Mrs. Lockhart—”
“Thea,” she said quickly. Their gazes met for a moment, and then hers darted away. She poured the rest of her coffee down the sink and rinsed out the cup. “You can call me Thea.”
“That’s a very pretty name.”
“It’s for my grandmother,” she said, and then looked as if she wished she could take it back.
He smiled, trying to put her at ease. “Does your grandmother live here in Chicago?”
She almost smiled, too, as if recognizing his tactic. “My grandmother’s been dead for years, Detective.”
“John.” When she gave him a reluctant glance, he said, “I’m named for my father, Sean.”
“You’re Irish?”
“Very.”
“An Irish cop. That’s almost a cliché, isn’t it?”
“In that case, my whole family is a cliché.”
John had never seen a person’s demeanor change so rapidly. She’d been wary before, even a little frightened, but now her expression took on a frozen look, as if she’d donned a mask to hide her true identity, her real feelings. He’d wanted to put her at ease, but instead, her armor had grown thicker. She said stiffly, “You come from a family of cops.” It wasn’t a question, but a flat emotionless statement.
John shrugged. “Guilty.”
“I imagine you look out for each other. Take care of each other.”
John frowned at her tone. “Occasionally,” he said, thinking about his brothers. Actually he would be the last person Nick would come to for help, and Tony…well, Tony was another story.
Thea said quietly, “I’d like you to go now, Detective. There’s really nothing my daughter and I can do to help you.”
She was good, John realized suddenly. Too damn good. She’d distracted him from the questions he’d been intent on asking about her daughter, and all the while, convinced him he was the one in control.
He stared down at her, forcing her gaze to meet his. Her dark eyes were deep and unfathomable, a mysterious blend of fear, guile and cunning. A very dangerous mix.
“Just one more thing, Mrs. Lockhart.”
One brow rose slightly, and he could see that the fingers clinging to the tiny gold chain around her throat trembled. His gaze dipped, in spite of himself, to the curves beneath her sweater, and an image of that lacy white bra leaped to his mind. He could almost see her in it, her breasts straining against the fabric, his thumb stroking her through the silk—
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said hoarsely.
His gaze shot to hers. I doubt that, he wanted to tell her. Then again, maybe she did know. Maybe that was why the blush on her cheeks had deepened, standing out starkly against the ivory of her complexion. Her brown eyes flashed with sudden fire, and John thought absurdly that if he hadn’t met her under these circum-stances…if she wasn’t a recent widow…if his marriage hadn’t made him more than a little careful…
“You’re thinking that if Nikki was on that roof, you might have an eyewitness to Gail Waters’s death. It would be cut and dried. You could close your case. But you’re wrong, Detective. My daughter wasn’t on that roof. She couldn’t have been.”
“But what if she was?” John challenged, ignoring the flicker of fear in her eyes. “What if Gail Waters didn’t commit suicide?”
She gasped slightly, her face going paler.
“What if she was murdered and your daughter saw it all? What if she is the only one who can identify the killer? Have you thought about that, Mrs. Lockhart?”
Chapter Three
After John left Thea that morning, he drove to the county morgue, housed in the huge Chicago Technology Park off Harrison. He’d called earlier and was expected.
“What’s so important about this case that I had to come in here to do the autopsy on a Sunday morning?” the assistant medical examiner demanded as she shoved a file in an already bulging drawer and slammed it shut.
John shrugged. “I figured you didn’t have anything better to do. Vince is out of town, isn’t he?”
Her eyes narrowed. “How did you know that?”
“Heard it through the grapevine.” John wasn’t about to admit to his ex-wife that he occasionally kept tabs on her new husband. Nor was he going to confide in her the possible significance of the Gail Waters case. Meredith hadn’t been very supportive when his father had disappeared seven years ago. She’d suggested Sean might have been involved in something shady or even a cover-up to protect his youngest son, Tony, from suspicion in his girlfriend’s brutal murder.
John had not taken kindly to Meredith’s insinuations, although, if he was honest with himself, he’d have to admit the occasional doubt about his father’s disappearance had crossed his own mind. Sean Gallagher wouldn’t have been the first cop to go off the deep end, nor the first man to walk out on his family. He and John’s mother, Maggie, had not exactly had a marriage made in heaven. And what with Tony’s troubles back then…
John forced his thoughts back to the present, letting his gaze rove critically over his ex-wife. He hated to admit it, but she looked good. “So how’s the baby?” he asked with only a tinge of…what? Envy? Jealousy? Self-pity?
Meredith laughed softly. She shoved back her unruly hair as she sat down at her desk. The action reminded him of Thea. They were both small women, both had dark hair, but the resemblance ended there. Meredith’s skin was olive, Thea’s like porcelain. Meredith could be a real bitch at times; Thea was…still a mystery.
“What can I say?” Her green eyes sparkled. “He’s tiny and beautiful and absolutely wonderful. A perfect male specimen, if I do say so myself.” Her gaze met John’s, and for just a split second, something that might have been regret flickered in her eyes. Then she said bluntly, “You look like hell, John. What have you been doing—living at the station?”
“Lot of active cases,” he muttered.
“What else is new?” She stood and pulled on a white lab coat that had been draped over the back of her chair. Her expression became sober and professional. “So what are we looking for here? Anything specific?”
“The usual. The victim took a dive off a five-story building, so I’ll want to know about brain contusions.” Not many lay people, including some murderers now serving prison time, knew that the bruising of the brain from a fall was different from that of a blunt-force injury. If Gail Waters had been bashed in the head before she hit the pavement, an autopsy would reveal it.
“Let’s do it then,” Meredith said wearily. “I’ve got a baby to get back to and a husband who promised to be home by dinner.”
Her meaning wasn’t lost on John. He’d missed more meals in the six years they’d been married than he cared to remember, and they both knew it had nothing to do with Meredith being a lousy cook. Even though she’d had her own impossible hours to deal with finishing her residency, John had been the one, more often than not, to phone with the apologies and excuses. After a while he hadn’t even bothered with those.
He shouldn’t have been surprised, then, when she’d announced one night that she was leaving him, nor when she’d admitted to—flung it in his face—a two-year affair with the man she was now married to. A man who had once been John’s friend.
“Why should you feel so betrayed?” she’d screamed at him that night. “I’m the one who’s had to put up with your mistress all these years.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I’ve never cheated on you.”
“I’m talking about that damn job of yours. You’re a cop first and a man second, John. And being a husband isn’t even a lousy third. I pity the next poor woman who falls in love with you.”
“John?” Meredith’s insistent voice brought him back to the present. She gave him a strange look. “You ready?”
“Just waiting for you.” He strode toward the door of her office. “Let’s get this over with. Like you said, you’ve got a husband and a baby to get home to.”
“And you?” Her gaze was more than a little curious.
He shrugged. “I’ve got a case to solve. That’s what I’m good at, remember?”
“I remember you were good at a few other things, too,” she said softly, her tone almost tender. “It just wasn’t enough.”
AFTER BREAKFAST Thea left Nikki coloring at the dining table while she went down the hall to Mrs. Lewellyn’s apartment. The building, with its stained carpeting and peeling paint, was old and badly in need of refurbishing, but that was why Thea could afford the rent.
The newer lakefront high-rises on Lake Shore Drive were way out of her price range, as were the redbrick town houses cropping up near the parks. Thea had chosen the university neighborhood because of its relatively low crime rate, and because the diversity made it easier to blend in. She’d thought of everything when she and Nikki had moved in here—except the possibility of a woman being murdered in their building.
Standing in the dimly lit corridor, Thea kept an eye on her own apartment door while she waited for the elderly woman to answer hers.
When Mrs. Lewellyn finally opened the door, her eyes widened with pleasure. “Why, Thea, I didn’t expect to see you this early. You got home rather late last night, didn’t you, dear?” She had the barest trace of an English accent, which suited perfectly her prim-and-proper demeanor. In spite of her stooped shoulders, she was several inches taller than Thea.
“It was just after midnight,” Thea said. “I want to thank you again for coming over on such short notice to stay with Nikki.”
Mrs. Lewellyn brushed aside her gratitude. She was dressed for church, Thea noticed, in a dark blue suit and matching pumps. Her gray hair, as always, was pulled into a bun at the back of her head. “It was my pleasure. You know I adore Nikki. She’s never any trouble at all.” She glanced past Thea into the hallway. “Where is she?”
“She’s in the apartment, coloring.” Thea cast another glance at her door. “I have to get back to her, but I wanted to talk to you in private for a moment.”
Mrs. Lewellyn’s brows rose. “About Nikki?”
Thea nodded. “I need to ask you something, Mrs. Lewellyn. Did you and Nikki leave the apartment last night?”
“Leave the apartment? No, dear. Why do you ask?” A worried light dawned in her eyes, and she put a hand to her heart. “You heard about that poor woman who jumped off the roof last night. That’s what has you so upset this morning, isn’t it?”
Thea shivered. “How did you hear about it?”
“It was on the news earlier. And I saw Mr. Dalrimple in the laundry room. Evidently the police have enlisted his help. He’s strutting around like a rooster in a hen coop.”
So that was where Detective Gallagher had gotten his tenant list and how he’d known Thea had a daughter. That was also why he’d been at her door first thing this morning.
Thea told herself it was foolish to blame the building manager for her current predicament, but truth be told, she’d been uneasy about Morris Dalrimple ever since she’d moved into the building. His gaze was just a little too admiring, his tone a little too interested, and once, when she and Nikki returned from grocery shopping, Thea was almost positive she’d caught him coming out of her apartment.
He’d told her he had been knocking on her door, claiming a clause in her lease needed her initials, but Thea wasn’t convinced. He’d looked guilty as she signed the paper, his face all flushed and his beady little eyes not quite able to meet hers. Thea knew he had a master key to all the apartments. What was to prevent him from coming and going as he pleased while tenants like her were at work or at school?
Shuddering, she said, “Nikki’s doll was found on the roof last night.”
“On the roof!” Mrs. Lewellyn looked genuinely shocked and more than a little concerned. “How on earth did it get up there?”
“I don’t know.” Thea paused. “I was thinking that if you and Nikki had left the apartment last night, maybe to come over here for a few minutes, she might have dropped the doll in the hallway. Someone else could have picked it up and taken it to the roof.” She knew she was grasping at straws, but there had to be a logical explanation. And Nikki being on the roof in the dead of night simply wasn’t logical.
“I think I may know what happened,” Mrs. Lewellyn said slowly. She wrapped a strand of pearls around her finger as she gazed pensively down the hallway. “I’ll bet you that girl took her up there.”
“Bliss?”
Scorn flashed in Mrs. Lewellyn’s eyes, and just a hint of triumph. She didn’t like Nikki’s regular baby-sitter and had not been shy in voicing her opinion. The girl’s too flighty, she’d said more than once, And not at all reliable. You should see the kind of people who hang out in her apartment. You don’t want her influence on Nikki, Thea dear. I’m more than happy to watch the child while you work.
But as much as she appreciated Mrs. Lewellyn’s help, Thea knew how trying a four-year-old could be, especially one with Nikki’s problems. And Bliss was wonderful with her, so patient and loving.
“You think Bliss took the doll up to the roof?” Thea asked doubtfully.
“Why, I’m certain that must be what happened. She was very secretive when I got to your apartment last evening. She huddled with Nikki, whispering to her and laughing, and I even heard her say something about a picnic that afternoon. But when I scolded her for taking the child outside, she just fluttered those fake eyelashes at me and said something like, ‘Why, Mrs. Lew, I have no idea what you’re talking about. We haven’t left the building all day, have we, Nikki?’ She can be very disrespectful, that girl.”
“So if the two of them had a picnic on the roof yesterday afternoon, Nikki could have left her doll up there then.” That would explain a lot, and Thea immediately warmed to the idea.
“I’m sure of it,” Mrs. Lewellyn said firmly. “Because Nikki couldn’t find her doll at bedtime last night. You know how she refuses to go to sleep unless Piper is tucked in safe and sound beside her, but when I put Nikki to bed, I couldn’t find the blasted doll anywhere. Nikki was very upset. I finally had to make her some warm milk, just so she’d calm down enough to drift off.”
As upset as Thea was over Bliss’s disobeying her orders, she was also intensely relieved. If Nikki hadn’t been on the roof last night, then she couldn’t have seen what happened to Gail Waters. She wasn’t a witness, as Detective Gallagher had claimed, which meant she wasn’t in any danger.
Unless, of course, the Mancusos found them. And Thea had no intention of letting that happen. “I’ll call and ask Bliss about it when she gets home.”
“She’s gone off to visit her parents,” Mrs. Lewellyn reminded her. “Or so she said. But that boyfriend of hers is still hanging around. I saw him on the stairs this morning. He gives me the willies, I don’t mind telling you. All that long hair. That awful scruffy beard. He looks as if he hasn’t bathed in weeks.” She paused, shuddering delicately. “You know, if I were you, I’d really set my foot down, Thea. Bliss had no right taking Nikki up there. That roof is a dangerous place. Why, the child could have fallen off just like that poor woman—”
“I know,” Thea cut in, not wanting Mrs. Lewellyn to finish her words. The visual in her mind was already too graphic. “I intend to speak to Bliss the moment she gets home.”
“If you need any help with Nikki, all you have to do is ask, dear.”
“Thank you.”
Mrs. Lewellyn seemed reluctant to let her go, and Thea knew the old woman was probably lonely. She had no family that Thea knew of, nor any friends who came calling. Except for her church work, Mrs. Lewellyn seemed as isolated as Thea and Nikki. For a moment Thea wondered if the older woman had something in her past that she was hiding from, too.
Not likely, Thea decided as she turned down the hall to her apartment. Mrs. Lewellyn was probably just an old woman who had outlived most of her friends and family.
Something that might have been self-pity tugged at Thea’s heart, and she had a vision of herself at that age, alone, bitter and still running. And what about Nikki? What kind of life had Thea sentenced her daughter to?
In a way Nikki was in her own prison. The trauma of that night, seeing her father dead on the floor, seeing the gun in her mother’s hand, had sent the child running to her own dark place. A silent place.
Dr. Nevin, the child psychologist Nikki was seeing, had warned Thea that her daughter’s treatment might take a long time. It could be months, even years, before Nikki trusted enough, felt safe enough, to speak. Until then, all Thea could do was be patient.
But sometimes it was so hard, seeing her daughter struggle. Thea wanted to fight Nikki’s battles for her. She wanted to crawl into that cold quiet place and slay every last one of her daughter’s dragons. After all, she was the one who had caused Nikki’s trauma, and if she could take back that night, if she could change the course of events that had led to Rick’s death, she would.
But her ex-husband would have killed her that night if she hadn’t pulled the trigger on her father’s gun. He might even have hurt Nikki. And that Thea could never allow.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that Mrs. Lewellyn had closed her door, but an uneasiness stole over her that she couldn’t seem to shake. Maybe it was the thought of Rick and what she’d done, but it almost seemed as if someone was watching her. Judging her.
You’re losing it, Thea scolded herself as she approached her apartment door. Sensing an invisible watcher was nothing new. Thea had long since become accustomed to glancing over her shoulder.
“You’re safe,” she muttered under her breath. No one was watching her. And now that she had an explanation for how Nikki’s doll had gotten on the roof, she and her daughter were in the clear with the police.
Once she told Detective Gallagher what had happened, there would be no reason for their further involvement in the case. There would be no point in his coming around anymore. He would be out of their lives for good. And her and Nikki’s secret would remain safe.
But as she inserted the key into the lock, a chill crawled up her backbone, and she couldn’t help looking over her shoulder once more. The hallway behind her was empty, and Mrs. Lewellyn’s door was still closed. No one was about.
But Thea couldn’t shake the chill. She stepped quickly into her apartment and closed the door, but not all the way. She listened through a tiny crack, and almost instantly, she heard the telltale click as a door somewhere in the hall was closed.
FIRST THING Monday morning John went around to his uncle’s office at the station and knocked on the open door. “You wanted to see me?”
Liam Gallagher glanced up from the report he’d been reading and motioned John into his office. Pushing sixty, Liam was still a handsome man with a shock of snow-white hair and bright blue eyes, which reflected his humor almost as often as his quick temper.
He was a seasoned detective who’d started out as a beat cop on Chicago’s south side nearly forty years ago, just as his father had before him and his younger brother, Sean, had after him. Liam’s son, Miles, worked in Narcotics. They were, as John had told Thea Lockhart, a family of cops.
Liam waited until John was seated, then said, “I asked Lieutenant McIntyre to send you down here because I wanted to talk to you about the report you and your partner filed yesterday morning.”
“You mean the Gail Waters case?”
Liam stuck a pair of bifocals on his broad Irish nose and glanced down at the paperwork on his desk. “McIntyre said you’d requested a follow-up investigation.”
“Is that a problem?”
His uncle glared at him over the rims of his glasses. “You know it is. We’re short over two hundred detectives in this division, and only half the homicides in this city get solved. I don’t have the time or the manpower to waste on a case that should be cleared.”
“I know, I know.” John sighed, all too familiar with the shortage of detectives and the stack of uncleared murder files waiting on his desk. He’d pulled a double watch for so long now he couldn’t remember what it was like to get home at a decent time or have more than four or five hours of uninterrupted sleep at night. He plowed an impatient hand through his hair. “I’m not convinced Gail Waters killed herself.”
“The evidence says otherwise.” Liam opened the folder containing John and Roy Cox’s reports and the preliminary autopsy findings. “No defense wounds, no hair, tissue or blood beneath her nails. No trace evidence or fingerprints at the scene. Toxicology tests clean. Contrecoup contusions to the brain, which means she was killed by the fall.” He closed the folder with an unmistakable finality.
If it walks like a suicide, quacks like a suicide…
John shifted in his chair. “Look, we spent most of the day yesterday canvassing the building and interviewing the tenants. We haven’t even had a chance yet to talk to her co-workers and family, let alone go through all her files. She has a database with hundreds, maybe thousands, of names from missing persons and fugitive reports she collected from every major police department in the country. One of those names could be a lead, but it’ll take days to go through that list.”
“And if you don’t find anything?”
John shrugged. “Then I don’t. All I’m asking is for a little more time. We haven’t been able to find out much about this woman except that she was a newspaper reporter. We still don’t know why she was at that building on Saturday night or who she went to see.”
As John spoke, an image of Nikki Lockhart came to his mind. The little girl’s dark eyes and solemn face haunted him, and he couldn’t shake the notion that she might have seen something that night. Might know something she couldn’t tell him.
And what about the kid’s mother? What was she hiding? John didn’t like to admit it, but Thea Lockhart haunted him, too. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind all day yesterday after he’d left her, and all night last night when he’d tried to catch a few hours’ sleep.
It wasn’t so much that he was drawn to her, he told himself, but that he was intrigued by her. She was extraordinarily feminine with her soulful eyes and dark curly hair, but John had the distinct impression her appearance was deceiving. There was something about the way she carried herself, the fierce way she guarded her little girl that made him think she would be a formidable adversary if crossed.
“There’s something else you need to know,” John said hesitantly. “Something I didn’t put in the report.”
His uncle frowned. “What?”
John got up and closed the office door. The squad room was crowded and noisy as always, but he didn’t want to take the chance his conversation might be overheard. “Gail Waters called me a few days ago and wanted to interview me for a piece she was doing on Dad’s disappearance. She’d done her homework, Liam. She knew all about Ashley’s murder, the frat party, Tony and Miles. She’d even been up to the prison to talk to Daniel O’Roarke on death row.”
In less than a minute Liam Gallagher aged ten years. The vitality drained out of his still-muscular body, leaving him stooped, haggard and old. He slumped in his chair. “What did you tell her?”
John shrugged. “Nothing. I didn’t have time to talk to her, and I didn’t feel like dredging up all that old business. But…”
“But what?”
“Now she’s dead.”
A spark of life ignited in Liam’s eyes. “What are you trying to say, Johnny?” His tone was angry
“Nothing. It may be just a coincidence. But it’s a piece of the puzzle I don’t think we can overlook.”
“You told anybody about this? McIntyre?”
“No.”
“Not even Roy Cox?”
“You’re the first person I’ve mentioned this to.” But John didn’t like keeping things from his partner. He’d be madder than hell if Roy pulled something like this on him.
Liam stared at John for a long moment, then said softly, in a voice traced with an Irish accent, “You’re sure about this, Johnny?”
Sure about what? That Gail Waters had called him or that she’d been murdered? “The only thing I’m sure of is that she called me and now she’s dead.”
Liam sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “Okay. You did the right thing bringing this to me. I’ll handle it from here.”
John didn’t like the edge in his uncle’s voice. “What are you going to do?”
Liam shrugged. “Follow procedure. There’s nothing in these reports that warrant a follow-up investigation.”
“I disagree.”
“Let it go, Johnny.” There was a warning note in his uncle’s voice.
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
In a sudden burst of temper Liam picked up the file and flung it at John. The contents spilled over his desk. “That wasn’t a request, goddamn it, that was an order.” His blue eyes glittering with fire, he folded his arms on his desk and leaned toward John. “You’ve always been a good cop, Johnny, and one helluva detective, but sometimes you remind me too much of Sean. You don’t know when to let go. You gotta think about this one, son. You gotta think what it would do to the family if you started asking the wrong questions. Think about your brother. Ashley’s murder nearly did Tony in back then. Look what it’s done to his life. I’ve had to appear before more review boards on his behalf than I care to remember. The kid’s always been hanging on by a thread. What do you think would happen to him if he had to relive all that?”
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Amanda Stevens
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Nothing distracted true blue police detective John Gallagher from his work–certainly not a woman. Until a mysterious death led him to Thea Lockhart′s door. One look in Thea′s beautiful, haunted eyes and John wanted to run–from visions of love, marriage and forever! But Thea′s little girl might be the only witness to murder…Betrayed by the law that should have protected her, Thea had given up her identity to save her daughter. The last person she should trust was a policeman–but something in John′s steady gaze made her hope. If she told him the truth about her past, did she dare believe this man could be her future?