Mary's Child

by Ramin, Terese

  Forced to wait—something she’d developed an unwilling talent for, given how busy the boys were at various times of the year—she used her time to best advantage, studying Zeke’s fax, going over the reports she already had, shaking out the boxes to see if there was anything any of them might have missed. A rattle in one of Zeke’s cardboard file boxes caught her attention. She shook it again; again the rattle, but nothing fell out. Quickly she examined the box, opening and folding back the joins. Sure enough, hidden behind a fold of cardboard lay an unlabeled green threeand-a-half-inch high-density floppy diskette.

  Probably nothing, she cautioned herself, when excitement churned her stomach. Probably blank; one of Zeke’s that fell in and got stuck. Her competitive streak raised its head. She wanted it to be something. Teach “the boys” about leaving her behind while they went off to solve cases without her. Especially if, in being left behind, she managed to solve this case herself.

  Jeez Louise. She rolled her eyes and sighed at herself. Was that petty of her or what?

  Smiling for the first time since she’d found Joe—and Frank, blast his ever-lovin’ hide—gone, she slid the disk into the floppy drive and ran a quick directory. Names—surnames, Hallie guessed—scrolled up the screen. Patient files, she decided, disappointed. A diskette from Zeke’s private-office PC that had somehow gotten mixed into the hard copies he’d given her. No Martinez on the list, so probably nothing to do with Mary. Although why Zeke would leave an unlabeled diskette full of patient files lying about—and then lose it—was something she couldn’t fathom. He might be loose about some things—especially when it came to Sam and Ben—but he was thoroughly button-down when it came to protecting his patients’ rights to privacy.

  She pulled the floppy from the drive, tapped it thoughtfully. Maybe this was something Zeke meant for her to find and look at “by accident.” Something he’d discovered but couldn’t ethically share with her. Something he’d found a way to have her discover behind his back but that would give him plausible deniability.

  Speculation got you nothing but a heavy conscience and ulcers. She picked up the phone. She’d just ask the source. Then, if the disk wasn’t his, she’d open the files with a clear conscience and see if they were Mary’s.

  November 27, 5:18 p.m.

  So far as Zeke knew, the floppy wasn’t his. Couldn’t be, he said. He kept his personal files on tape.

  Within five minutes of hanging up, Hallie knew the diskette had belonged to Mary. Knew where and how Joe’s late wife had managed to get medical histories she didn’t have access to through her own work: somehow she’d used her sessions with Zeke to gain entrance to his records, copy what she wanted and get out without him being the wiser.

  No doubt easy to do when you and your husband were best friend’s with your therapist and his ex-wife. Especially if you pretended to be distraught and in need of the “moment alone” Zeke’s notes said Mary had often requested, and he, trusting her, had given it. Wanting to rule out physical causes for whatever might ail them, Zeke often suggested his patients go for full medical work-ups when they first started seeing him. Physical histories were attached to his records. If the first five names on the disk were any indication, Mary trolled Zeke’s tapes for single, healthy men whose lab work was up-to-date and on file.

  There were fifteen names. Hallie went through them all once quickly, then went back through them all slowly. Ten names rang bells, five were unknown to her. One of the ten who rang bells was listed as deceased, on November 27, two years previously. Odd coincidence, that. Same date Mary had died, a year later.

  When Hallie read the rest of the entry, a glimmer of light dawned. Not enough to draw a conclusion, but a place to plant suspicion.

  Tomas Guttierez, six-foot-six, two hundred sixty pounds, Mexican, age twenty-seven, was also listed as the sperm donor for Mary’s third pregnancy.

  Sheriff’s department, November 27, 5:20 p.m.

  Joe paced. Frank paced. Even run on fast computers with a specific set of dates and restrictions as to gender, cross-referencing the fifteen years’ worth of case files with Joe’s name on them took longer than either of them liked. Particularly since, not really wanting to believe an officer could be involved, they made sure to look at all of Joe’s files that involved women.

  At a desk nearby, another technician ran the tape of Mary’s murder again and again, blowing up frames and pieces of frames, examining them, moving on. With nothing to do but wait, Joe watched the footage he could have played from memory. At 6:15 p.m. the tape starts rolling; 6:19 p.m. Mary enters the frame; 6:20 p.m. she turns and smiles as someone apparently calls her name and approaches.

  At six-twenty and twenty seconds, she’s no longer smiling. Continues to face the camera while tossing her purse and car keys onto the front seat of the Blazer. Six-twenty-two she says something, possibly telling her attacker to just take the vehicle and go. Six-twenty-two and forty seconds, the first real fear crosses her face. Six-twenty-three she holds out her hands, trying to protect herself or bargain or both. Six-twenty-three and thirty-two seconds, her mouth forms the word “No!” then she folds and falls as the bullets enter her body.

  Six-twenty-four through six-twenty-six, the film runs on the empty, blood-splattered Blazer. Then the camera jiggles, is lifted, and pans down to sit on Mary’s face, waiting, apparently, for the life to go out of her eyes. At six-twentynine the tape goes blank. End of story.

  The end, Joe thought bitterly, of another life.

  He doubted now that he and Mary would have been able to stay married, that she’d have been able to keep up the facade forever, but “dead” didn’t solve anything. Dead didn’t let you resolve, after the fact, what she’d done to you and others.

  He stared at the frames being blown up, the ones that established with frightening accuracy Mary’s time of death: November 27, 6:28 p.m.

  A nauseating thought occurred to him. He turned to the computer tech.

  “Can you narrow that search to one specific date and time?”

  The tech shrugged. “If it’s in your reports, I can.”

  “Try November 27—” He broke off when someone across the room called his name.

  “Hey, Sarge—” His old rank. “Phone. It’s Lieutenant Thompson.”

  “Tell her I’ll call her back. I’m on to something. I can’t talk right now.”

  A brief silence. Then, “She says to tell you it’s urgent.”

  Torn, Joe looked at the phone, then back at the computer screen. “Take a message. Or no, better yet—”

  He eyed Frank who shook his head. “Oh, no.”

  “Let Frank talk to her.”

  “Thanks a bunch,” Frank muttered, but went.

  In the end Joe wound up talking to Hallie just as, Frank muttered when he’d handed him the phone, they’d known dam well he would.

  “What you got?” Joe demanded, sounding harrassed.

  “Talk nice,” Hallie suggested tartly. “I might tell you.”

  He sighed. Hallie felt the sound, the breath clear to her toes. He had something, she could feel it. The same way they’d always been in sync as partners, they were in sync now only more so. Flesh and bone so.

  And, at the very least where Maura was concerned, heart and soul so, too.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got something here I don’t like, but I don’t have all the pieces—”

  “Would a name and date help?”

  The tiredness went out of Joe’s voice in a flash. “I got a date and a time,” he said carefully.

  “November 27?” Hallie asked.

  “Give me the name,” Joe said.

  November 27, 5:37 p.m.

  Hallie hung up the phone with justified satisfaction. Between what Joe was looking into and what she’d just given him—when he’d finally accepted the phone from Frank, that is—she was pretty sure it was all over now but the identification and the capture. She could feel it.

  What was it they said about counting your chic
kens before you caught them and made sure they were chickens?

  Not enough apparently, because that’s exactly what she did: counted her uncaught chickens, mentally beheaded them, plucked them, and readied them for the grill. Which was really a bad idea considering that it was just as she’d finished painting these virtual chickens with her equally virtual homemade barbecue sauce that the doorbell rang and the virtual version of hell broke loose.

  Shouldn’t-haves never having stopped her before, Hallie answered the door before any of the troopers could reach it. Crompton and Montoya stood on the porch.

  “L.T.,” Crompton said by way of greeting.

  Hallie eyed them. “What’s up?”

  “Sergeant Nillson radioed, requested Deputy Crompton and me to bring you and meet them at Mr. Martinez’s house,” Montoya said.

  Behind Hallie an exasperated officer swore and tried to get between her and the door. Hallie glared at him; he backed two steps away.

  She returned her attention to Montoya. “He say why?”

  Crompton shook his head. “Just said they found something more Mr. Martinez wants you to look at.”

  “I see,” Hallie said. And she almost, but not quite, could.

  What she almost saw she didn’t like. The parts she couldn’t see, she liked even less. No way out but through, she thought. But first she’d find out if she couldn’t go around.

  “I just spoke with both Joe and Frank at the department not ten minutes ago. Things have changed since then?”

  Montoya shrugged. “I don’t know, ma’am. We just do what they tell us.”

  “I understand.” Hallie chewed the inside of her cheek. “Come in and wait. Let me give ’em a call, make sure we don’t have our wires crossed.”

  Crompton put a foot across the threshold; Montoya hesitated.

  “If it’s all the same to you, Lieutenant, we’ll wait for you in the car.”

  Crompton looked at her, grimaced and sighed. “What she said, L.T.,” he agreed reluctantly.

  Hallie placed the call quickly. According to dispatch, Joe and Frank had indeed left the department only moments before. No, he didn’t know where they were en route to, but yes, they had left in quite a hurry.

  Good enough, Hallie thought. Then she put down her not terribly dainty size ten-and-a-half, wide, and informed the troopers in her way that, orders or no, if they did not move of their own choice, she would move them herself and don’t think she wouldn’t.

  With tremendous reluctance the troopers moved. But only as far as the kitchen where they decided which two of them would stay and which two would follow wherever she led. The Martinez house, she told them, irritated, then suggested they go on ahead and meet her there. Which, surprisingly, they did.

  Officers dispatched, she grabbed her jacket, then almost in afterthought, retrieved her Beretta 9-mm and ammunition from her bedroom safe, put on her shoulder holster, covered the rig with her jacket, lifted Joe’s keys from the hook in the kitchen and joined Crompton and Montoya in the car.

  Backtrack to county computer and video lab November 27, 5:33 p.m.

  Joe stared at the screens, jaw working, muscles tight.

  The name Hallie had given him haunted his memory the way any shooting would; the photo of Tomas Guttierez was spookier still. Physically like Joe enough to have been a cousin. Mary’s lover—or whatever she would have called him; “subject,” perhaps—Guttierez, had died two years ago today at approximately 6:28 p.m. in a shootout with Detective Sergeant Martinez of the Cuyahoga County sheriffs department. Guttierez, who’d been in therapy with Dr. Ezekiel Thompson trying to work out layoff-related depression. Who’d unintentionally destroyed his girlfriend’s daughter in a drunken rage. Who’d taken his girlfriend hostage. Who’d given Joe no choice but to put him down. And whose girlfriend fit all the characteristics described in the profile.

  Tomas Guttierez was Cat Montoya’s boyfriend.

  He should have seen it, he was sure. How, he didn’t know, but something should have clicked. After all, it had been there on the tape in full view all this time. Right there in the corner, the date, the time running, the instant of the shooting, the clocking of death. He looked at the screen. It wasn’t absolute; there was still a chance it wasn’t Montoya, but in his gut he was sure.

  Now that he saw it, it was so damned obvious. Montoya had had access to the house two days in a row—both days when things had gone wrong. She had access to the neighborhood; she lived a block and a half from Hallie. She’d been back in the county and working for the sheriff’s department for not quite three months, was it? And hell, she’d practically told him everything herself yesterday. Upping the stakes, playing tag with the devil.

  He looked at Frank. “Montoya,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  “You looked at the same evidence I did,” Joe said tightly. “You tell me.”

  Frank eyed the screens, made the same mental trek Joe had made. Scrubbed his knuckles across his mouth. “Sometimes I hate this job.”

  “Yeah,” Joe agreed. “But we still gotta do it.”

  Frank made a sound of regret. “I’ll find out if she’s on duty. See if we can locate her the easy way first.”

  “However we do it,” Joe said grimly, heading for the door, “it better be fast. If she’s working a pattern, we’ve got an hour.”

  Fast on his heels, Frank held out his watch. “Less.”

  Martinez residence November 27, 5:50 p.m.

  The house was dark and cool, smelled empty in spite of being recently dusted and vacuumed. Hallie waved the troopers off and let herself and the deputies in, turned on lights and upped the heat.

  “Now what?” Crompton asked.

  “Now we wait,” Montoya said calmly.

  Hallie eyed the deputy curiously. There was something in the way she spoke that raised the hackles on Hallie’s neck. Not with fear, but caution.

  “Nuts,” Crompton was saying. “It’s dinnertime. My blood sugar. You know I gotta eat regular, Cat. We shoulda stopped for somethin’ on the way over.”

  “Sounded important we get the lieutenant here,” Montoya reminded him. “Now she’s here, you can go get something, bring it back.”

  Crompton jumped on it. “You sure?” He turned to Hallie. “L.T.?”

  Hallie slid a covert glance at Montoya. Now she remembered what hadn’t clicked earlier. Tomas Guttierez had been Montoya’s boyfriend, the man Joe had been forced to shoot when he’d threatened a neighborhood. Montoya had made Joe’s life hell pressing internal investigations to end his career. Instead, she’d been the one to quit the state police and leave the area. It was possible she’d returned last year not long before Mary was killed, then left again. Certainly she’d come back again recently enough to hire in with the county, move into a house not far from Hallie’s own and be able and available to take all the pictures of Hallie and the kids she wanted to take.

  “L.T.?” Crompton repeated. “It’s all right if I go?”

  “Yeah, sure, Leroy.” Hallie nodded, reached into her pocket for her wallet, withdrew a couple of bills. “Bring me back a burger or something, too, would you? I forgot to eat before I left.”

  “Will do. Cat, you want anything?”

  Hallie watched impatience flare and skitter across Montoya’s face, saw her eyes flick to her watch. Then self-control returned.

  “No, thanks, Leroy. I’m not hungry.”

  Crompton grinned, headed for the door. “You always say that, then you always steal mine. I’ll bring you something anyway.” The door closed quietly behind him.

  Montoya glanced at Hallie. “He’s a bit of a hypochondriac, but he’s a good partner.”

  “I’ll bet he is.”

  “He and his wife take people in just like that, no questions. Make ’em family.” She walked around the house, looking things over, touching what had been Mary’s as though she knew they’d belonged to a beaten rival. “You ever had a partner like that, Lieutenant? One who doesn’t ask who you were
or who you are, just accepts that you are?”

  Hallie smiled. “Yeah, I have. I’ve known him all my life, though, so I suppose he doesn’t really count.”

  Montoya lifted the glass from an anniversary clock, put the works in motion, set it by her watch, re-covered it. “I suppose,” she agreed absently.

  Hallie looked at the clock. Something about time rang a chime in her mind and faded.

  “What are we doing here, Cat?”

  Montoya turned, faintly surprised. “Lieutenant?”

  “What are we doing here?”

  Montoya shrugged lightly. “Waiting,” she said. “Did I forget to tell you?”

  “Waiting for what?”

  Montoya viewed her, puzzled. “The right time, of course. Six-twenty-three to six-twenty-eight. After Mr. Martinez gets here and before Leroy comes back.”

  Frank’s unmarked car November 27, 5:50 p.m.

  Swearing violently, Joe snapped Frank’s cell phone closed and pitched it onto the dashboard.

  “She’s not at the house,” Frank guessed.

  “She’s on her way to my house,” Joe snapped. “With Montoya.”

  “Sh—” Frank bit off the word. “How’d Montoya get her away from the troops?”

  “Brought her partner along to verify the story. Let a couple of the troops follow. Calm as you please.”

  “You think she wants to kill Hallie?”

  “I don’t know who or what the hell she wants. Just step on it or let me drive.”

  Martinez residence 6:10 p.m.

  “What happens after Joe gets here?” Hallie asked.

  Montoya shrugged. “Then we play the game.”

  “The game?”

  “Yes.” Montoya nodded. “The same one he played with my boyfriend at my house two years ago. Only this time we do it at his house and we see who stands up in the end.”