The Man Behind the Cop

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The Man Behind the Cop Page 12

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby


  Wade offered to repay him; Bruce declined, even though he was a little embarrassed by the whole thing. It was a pissing contest, he knew damn well. All afternoon, these two adult men had been silently warring over who knew best what Trevor liked or wanted, and who would pay for it. The kid remained oblivious, thank God.

  The Mariners pulled one more run out of the hat and won. Trevor admitted to being sick to his stomach by the time they walked out of the stadium to the car.

  During the drive home, it seemed as if the conversation was all Wade and Trevor. They talked about a movie they’d rented last night, about homework, about stuff Trevor could do this summer.

  Bruce forced himself to put in a word now and again, but got quieter and quieter without either of the other two noticing. His chest felt tight, and he finally identified what was wrong.

  He was jealous. Trevor didn’t need him anymore.

  Didn’t think he needed him, Bruce corrected himself. Wade had yet to prove himself. Putting on a good front for a few days, a week, was easy. Whether he’d stay such a good guy once the novelty of parenting wore off was another matter. Trevor could be a butt; what kid wasn’t sometimes? Would a man whose habit was to express his frustration with his fists be able to respond appropriately?

  Bruce would believe it when he saw it.

  Yeah, he thought. Trevor would still need him, even if he didn’t know it yet.

  “Good game,” he agreed, letting them out in front of the small, white-frame house in Ballard that was now home to a boy who’d never lived in a real house before. He lightly cuffed Trevor on the shoulder and said, “Talk to you soon,” then accepted Wade’s hand for a shake.

  Their eyes met and held. “You be good to him,” Bruce said.

  “Count on it,” Trevor’s father told him.

  Real quiet, so the boy didn’t hear, Bruce said, “I plan to make sure of it.”

  Damned if he didn’t enjoy the flare of anger he saw on Wade’s face, as if in provoking it, he himself had somehow won.

  Trevor bounced impatiently on the sidewalk. “Come on, Dad!”

  Eyes narrowed, Wade murmured, “Watch me,” and got out.

  Bruce did, as the two walked up to the front door, talking and laughing all the way. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel and his stomach roiled.

  Shouldn’t have eaten the hot dogs.

  At last, he made himself put the car in gear.

  Oh, yeah, he’d be watching.

  TUESDAY MORNING, Susan put the call through to Karin when she was between patients. “A Yolanda Muñoz,” she said.

  Karin’s heart skipped a beat. Lenora’s sister had never phoned her at A Woman’s Hand. Something had changed. She pushed the button for line one. “Yolanda?”

  The woman’s voice was charged with excitement. “Lenora—she’s awake! Still confused, but she knows who I am!”

  “What does the doctor say?”

  “He thinks it’s a miracle.” She was clearly giddy.

  “The way they all shook their heads, I knew they thought she would die. But she’s made them all wrong.”

  “Thank God,” Karin whispered.

  “Yes. I’ve prayed and prayed. He saved her, because Anna and Enrico need her.”

  Karin bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. “Have you told her…?”

  After a long silence, Yolanda returned a subdued “She hasn’t asked yet. It just happened. I left Imelda with her so I could call you.”

  Imelda was her oldest, a plump, sweet girl of fourteen.

  More haltingly, Yolanda said, “I was hoping…I thought, if you were here…”

  “I have one more client to see, then I’ll leave. I should be there in an hour and a half.”

  “An hour and a half? That should be all right. The doctor wants to examine her. I won’t let her ask until you’re here.”

  Karin wanted with all her heart not to be there when Lenora found out that her husband had murdered her aunt and taken the children. But she wasn’t quite coward enough to find an excuse. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t talk every day with distraught women about the most traumatic of subjects.

  Still, this was different. She’d actually seen the attack. It had happened on her watch, so to speak. No matter how hard she’d tried, she hadn’t quite convinced herself that she didn’t share some blame.

  Not sure if anyone else would think to call Bruce, as the investigating officer, immediately, she did.

  “I only have a minute,” she said when he answered his cell phone. “I just heard from Yolanda Muñoz. Lenora woke up.”

  “My God. Is she talking?”

  “Uh…” Karin reviewed the conversation in her mind.

  “I don’t know. Yolanda said she recognized her, and that the doctor was doing an exam. She said Lenora was still confused.”

  “Are you going over to the hospital?”

  “At five.”

  “We’ll want to interview her as soon as possible. I can’t get away yet. Can you phone me once you’ve seen her?”

  She promised she would, and then had Susan send her last client of the day in. Fortunately, Lila Wang didn’t require great concentration. A pretty Asian woman who had been emotionally abused by a boyfriend, she was upbeat about a new job, and only slightly apprehensive about the move to San Francisco that it would entail. Karin was able to reassure her that she was ready. The time when Lila had needed her was past, to both their satisfaction, although Karin always felt a pang at this moment, as if she were a parent releasing a child to the world.

  She walked Lila out and they hugged, Lila promising to phone once she was settled to let Karin know how she was doing.

  The moment the woman was out the door, Karin snatched up her purse, gave a hurried explanation to Jerlyn, who’d emerged from her office, and rushed to her car.

  Relatives crowded around Lenora’s bed at the hospital. All were in a state of high emotion, exclaiming in Spanish over the top of one another and so fast that Karin, who did speak the language, could barely pick out a few words. On the edge of the crowd, Yolanda was wiping tears from her cheeks.

  A nurse, who’d hurried in right in front of Karin, said firmly, “Please! Only two visitors at a time!”

  Nobody paid her any attention. Yolanda did spot Karin, though, and her face lit with relief.

  “¡La médica està aqui!” She flapped her hands and shooed the cluster of children and adults back from the bed, telling them to let Karin through.

  Lenora lay against the pillows, face wan, distress seeming to ooze from her, and yet the return of life had changed her features to someone Karin was intensely grateful to recognize.

  Tears burning the back of her eyes, she stepped to the edge of the bed and carefully took Lenora’s hand. “I’m so glad to see you awake.”

  The dark eyes examined her, the bewilderment in them heartbreaking. For a moment Karin was certain she didn’t recognize her, but at last her forehead crinkled and she murmured, a mere breath of air, “Karin?”

  “Yes.” Karin swallowed. “We’ve been so worried about you.”

  “I don’t understand.” Her gaze wandered to the nurse, and from face to face in the crowd of relatives Yolanda had herded to the foot of the bed.

  “You were hit in the head.” She hesitated. “Do you remember?”

  Lenora shook her head.

  Karin looked an appeal to Lenora’s sister, who stayed back but said, “She wants to know where Roberto is.”

  Oh, Lord. She didn’t even remember fleeing to the safe house?

  Karin pressed her hand. “You left Roberto,” she said bluntly. “You saved money for weeks so you’d have enough to get by for a while.”

  The dark eyes stared at her without comprehension. “Anna? Enrico?”

  Karin drew a deep breath, and made a decision. “They’re with Roberto.”

  “Oh.” Something like relief relaxed her face. On some level, she had been anxious about their absence. But it seemed too soon to tell her th
at her husband was the one who had hurt her and had stolen her children.

  “Why don’t we let you rest,” Karin murmured.

  “Yes,” she whispered, peering uncertainly again at the faces staring back at her, as if she didn’t understand quite who they were or why they were there.

  Her uncle was present, Karin saw, out of the corner of her eye, his face heavily lined with grief, but he’d had the sense not to say anything about his wife or Lenora’s children. As much as Lenora did grasp, she would soon enough wonder about her aunt Julia’s absence and why Roberto didn’t bring the children to visit her. But tomorrow, Karin thought, was time enough to stun her with the awful events she’d missed.

  “You’re going to be fine,” she said, smiling, her vision blurred with tears. “Don’t worry, Lenora. Everything will come back to you. Don’t hurry it.”

  A tiny nod, and it seemed to her that the small dark-haired woman allowed herself to relax. Her eyes drifted shut.

  Yolanda turned and fiercely flapped her hands again. The rest of the family dutifully filed out, followed by her and Karin. The nurse remained, her hand on Lenora’s wrist as she checked her pulse.

  “You don’t think we should have told her?” Yolanda demanded the minute they were out in the hall.

  “Not yet. You’re right. She’s still confused. I think it would be better if we let her recover a little before we distress her.”

  Or had she just taken the coward’s way out?

  Yolanda looked no more convinced than Karin felt. “What do I say if she asks for the children?”

  “I don’t believe we should lie to her,” Karin said slowly.

  “When she gets insistent, then we’ll have to tell her. For now, you can just say again that they’re with Roberto.”

  Lenora’s sister nodded, grudging. “You’ll come again, sí?”

  “Sí. First thing in the morning, before I go to work.”

  “That policeman—he’ll want to talk to her, won’t he?”

  “Yes, but not until Lenora remembers what happened.” She hoped; having a police officer loom over her bed, asking questions, would certainly mean that Lenora would have to be offered a far more complete explanation than she’d seemed to want tonight.

  “Will you call him? Tell him he would upset her?”

  Karin agreed, and left Yolanda to send the rest of the family home. She would remain, she insisted, in case Lenora needed someone familiar.

  Karin discovered she had no cell-phone reception in the parking garage, so she drove out and found a spot on the street.

  The phone rang barely once, Bruce answering so quickly she knew he’d been waiting for her call.

  “How is she?”

  She described the visit and admitted how much she hadn’t wanted to tell Lenora what had really happened.

  “Should I have?” she asked, feeling pitiful.

  “No.” His answer was decisive. “There’s no escaping it, but you’ll know when the time is right. Why are you questioning yourself? You have good instincts.”

  “Thank you,” Karin said meekly. “How’s your new case going?”

  He and Molly had squeezed out the time to do the self-defense workshop at A Woman’s Hand last night, but both had been obviously distracted. Bruce had given Karin a quick kiss afterward, and had gone.

  “We’re about to make an arrest. That means I’ll be tied up all night with booking and reports.” He paused.

  “I’d rather be with you.”

  A little shakily, she said, “I’d like to be with you, too. But I’m fine. It’s good that you’ve caught the bad guy.”

  “I do occasionally.” He sounded wry. “This was a drug-dealer turf war. No real victims. I’d rather catch Escobar.”

  “You will.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Okay.” The words I love you crowded her tongue, shocking her a little. They had come so close to escaping, as if they were something she said often, as commonly as goodbye.

  What would he have said in return? she wondered.

  “If I get a minute, I’ll call you later,” he said.

  Pressing End and restoring her cell phone to her purse, Karin asked herself if that was the closest he would ever come to telling her he loved her. It was a way of saying that he cared, she supposed. Cold comfort.

  What would happen when she let the words slip, as she inevitably must?

  Of course she knew. That would send him running. After all, he’d warned her. He didn’t fall in love, and he never intended to marry.

  Making no effort to put her car in gear, Karin sat with her head resting back, her eyes closed.

  I’m a fool, she thought unhappily. She should tell him and get it over with.

  Sooner rather than later.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BRUCE WALKED into Lenora Escobar’s hospital room on Thursday to find Karin was there before him. The curtains rattled as he pushed them aside.

  Karin, sitting on the far side of the bed, gave him the quick smile that warmed someplace deep inside him. As always, she was beautiful, her corn-silk hair bundled up carelessly, baring the graceful length of her neck. She wore only gold hoops in her ears and a simple white tee that was almost, but not quite, an off-the-shoulder style. Even her collarbone was sexy to him.

  He nodded back, then turned his attention to the other woman. Two days had passed since Lenora had opened her eyes and spoken to her sister. This morning, finally, her questions about her children had become so insistent Yolanda had begged Karin to be the one to tell Lenora the entire story.

  “Hi, Lenora. I don’t know if you remember me.”

  With the bed cranked to its highest setting, she sat nearly upright, wearing some kind of pink chenille robe that couldn’t be hospital issue. Her head was still wrapped in a stiff white casing, but her face was unmarked by the trauma to the back of her head. He pictured her from that first workshop, a pretty, too-thin woman who’d then had a wealth of dark hair, presumably now shaved off.

  She studied him with uncomfortable intensity. “I don’t exactly remember, but…Maybe a little. I know your face.” She glanced at Karin, then back at him. “Karin told me you led that class.”

  “Yes.” He stood, his hands loosely wrapped around the top bar of the bed railing. “I wish it had done you some good.”

  She shook her head. “Roberto—he could be so mean. When he used to hit me, I never had time to duck. He was fast.” Her hand lifted and jerked, an unnerving mimicry.

  “Do you recall leaving him?”

  Another shake. “I remember putting money away. I liked looking at him and planning how I was going to take the children and go.”

  “Karin’s told you what Roberto did.”

  Grief suffused her face. “He killed Aunt Julia. She was like my mother. And…” Her voice faltered. “Anna and Enrico. He has them.”

  “He killed her to get them.”

  “He always said he wouldn’t let me go.” Her voice was duller now; she rolled her head against the pillow to speak to Karin. “You warned me not to tell him I was going. You said if I had someone with me, he’d hurt that person, too.”

  Surprised, Karin exclaimed, “I said that only a couple of days before you did take the kids and leave him.”

  Her forehead creased. “Then why don’t I remember?”

  “It’s common,” Bruce told her, “for someone who has a head injury like you do to have blocked out everything leading up to the trauma. It may be that part of you does remember. Deep inside, you know that the day you left him was the beginning.”

  “If I’d stayed…”

  “Sooner or later, he was going to hurt you just as bad,” Karin said firmly.

  “I was afraid…” she whispered.

  “That he’d hurt the children, too.”

  “Yes.” She was now frantic, and her gaze swung back to Bruce. “Why can’t you find them? He can’t take care of Enrico and Anna!”

  “I’m hoping you can give us s
ome ideas about where he might have gone.”

  “I don’t know! How can I?”

  Karin leaned forward and laid a gentle hand on Lenora’s. “You know him, Lenora. Detective Walker just hopes you can tell him about Roberto’s friends, maybe places he’s been.”

  “I understand his mother recently returned to Mexico,” Bruce said. “Do you think he would take the kids and follow her?”

  “I don’t know! He was angry at her for going back. And his mother—she’d ask where I am.”

  “We’ve contacted police in Chiapas. They’ve talked to her and to her other son. Roberto’s brother,” he said in an aside for Karin’s benefit, “has promised to phone if they hear from him.” The officer with whom Bruce had spoken wasn’t sure the mother would betray Roberto, but the brother seemed to be angry with him.

  “He always said how much better it was here.” Lenora moved fretfully. “I don’t think he would want to go back to Mexico.”

  “Did he ever follow the harvests, like your sister and her family?”

  “No. When he first came to this country, Roberto worked building houses. He was always good at building. He could make more money doing that than he could picking apples or asparagus.”

  When coaxed, she told them that Roberto had stolen into the United States illegally, paying a coyote one thousand dollars to smuggle him inside a truck over the border. Roberto had lived in Los Angeles at first, but he didn’t like it there, so he had gotten a ride with other immigrants north. He had stopped in Sacramento, then gone briefly to Idaho before ending up in Seattle, where he got his green card following an amnesty offer.

  “He always said he didn’t like the other places. But sometimes he threatened to move us. He didn’t like how much time I spent talking to Aunt Julia on the phone.” Her face crumpled, and she whispered, “Is that why he killed her?”

  Bruce wondered, too, picturing that day. Roberto had already hated his wife’s aunt, and now the aunt had conspired to help Lenora escape him. She was trying to keep his children from him.

  How Roberto thought was still more of a mystery to Bruce than he liked. Although filled with rage, Roberto had no ability to empathize or understand normal human emotions. He could hit his wife, then act as if nothing whatsoever had happened. Hot and cold. Which had he been when he’d murdered Julia Lopez? Fiercely glad to punish her for all the years in which she had, in his mind, encouraged Lenora to defy him? Or essentially oblivious to her existence as a human being? At that moment, had she been no more than an obstacle to him, one that needed eliminating?

 

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